


Episodes

by FrameofMind



Category: KAT-TUN (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 02:53:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 76,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11865147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrameofMind/pseuds/FrameofMind
Summary: Jin has always been sure he’s straight.





	1. 2005

**Author's Note:**

> **Title:** Episodes  
>  **Author:** FrameofMind  
>  **Beta By:** Jo_Lasalle  
>  **Pairing:** Akame  
>  **Genre:** Romance/General  
>  **Rating:** NC-17  
>  **Word Count:** ~76,000 (9 Chapters + Epilogue)  
>  **Disclaimer:** This is a work of fiction.  
>  **Summary:** Jin has always been sure he’s straight.  
>  **Author's Note:** You know when you have one of those ideas that you think will be a quickie, and it ends up taking two years to finish? That's this story. : )
> 
> Many thanks to Jo_Lasalle! She was instrumental to the process of turning this very shaggy dog into an adorable panda...

_Spring_  
  
The key is sticky. Jin jiggles and yanks, but it doesn’t seem to want to come out of the lock. It also doesn’t really seem to want to stay put in front of him, but maybe that’s just the hinges, or maybe it’s Jin.  
  
“Ouch,” he says when Kame elbows him in the hip. Kame giggles an apology and clutches at the side of Jin’s pants to pull himself upright again, trying to get the other shoe off. By the time Jin finally gets the key out of the lock, Kame has slipped past him and flopped onto the couch, where he’s squirming around trying to get his head unstuck from the crook of the armrest.  
  
“Not there,” Jin says, kicking his second shoe on top of the pile by the rack and going over to tug at the tail of Kame’s t-shirt—which slides halfway off his bony shoulder as Kame twists away with another little drunken giggle. “Come on, sleep on the bed.”  
  
“Why?” Kame mumbles into the cushions.  
  
“Because Pi will sit on you when he comes in here to have breakfast.”  
  
“But here is closer,” Kame argues, totally ignoring the threat of Pi’s big fat butt in his face to reach back and grab a handful of Jin’s t-shirt, pulling Jin to his knees.  
  
The impact sends a little throb through Jin’s head. “Kame, come on,” he grumbles, because this guy really doesn't know what’s good for him, and also it's late. “The couch is too small…”  
  
Jin tries to get his arms underneath Kame so he can scoop him up off the couch, but Kame just squirms and laughs again, really not helping. Eventually Kame catches him in the stomach with an elbow, and Jin slumps to the floor with a grunt, and Kame is  _still_  laughing, and he is  _such a pain in the ass_  when he's drunk.  
  
(Well. In a different way than he is when he's sober.)  
  
It wasn’t even supposed to be that much. Jin is pretty good at holding his liquor by now, and even Kame was going toe to toe with Nakama-san on the scotch—but then Mokomichi had to be a hero and bust out the goldschlager, and pretty soon everybody except that eight-foot freak of nature was sliding under the table. Kame was one of the first to go. Jin only lasted a little bit longer.  
  
“Kaaazu,” he whines.  
  
“Hm.”  
  
Jin pokes him in the back, and Kame laughs again.  
  
“Come to bed with me.”  
  
There’s a little pause. Kame seems kind of still all of a sudden, and after a moment Jin starts to wonder if maybe he’s fallen asleep already. He might be easier to carry if he has.  
  
Just as he’s about to try, Kame squirms around again until he’s on his stomach, peeking out from between messy bangs and blinking one blurry eye at Jin. It darts away again, and Jin is having trouble keeping stuff in focus himself—the room is tilting juuust slightly. Kame turns his face into the cushion.  
  
“Okay,” he mumbles.  
  
Well. That was easy. Why couldn’t he be that agreeable before? Jin sighs his relief and pushes himself up again, tugging at Kame’s t-shirt a couple more times before turning to concentrate on not bumping into furniture on his way into the bedroom. He’s already pulling off his jeans and dropping them on the floor by the time Kame follows him in. Kame seems to wait a few moments before taking off his own pants and folding them over the back of the chair.  
  
“Come on, it’s cold,” Jin says as he climbs into bed, flapping the other side of the covers open for Kame. “You have to warm me up.” Kame is still moving slowly, sort of stopping on every step, like he thinks he left the gas on or something. It’s weird. He wasn’t like this a minute ago. Jin wonders if maybe he’s feeling sick from the liquor, but he’s too tired to really worry about it, just checks that the trash can on Kame's side is still there.  
  
When Kame finally crawls under the covers, Jin scoots over closer so he can leech warmth. For such a skinny person, Kame sure generates a lot of heat.  
  
When Jin closes his eyes and settles his head against Kame’s shoulder, he hears Kame swallow. He’s surprisingly cozy for a bag of bones too—you wouldn’t know it to look at him, but Jin always likes the way it feels cuddled up next to him. He’s sort of sturdy and soft at the same time, like a nice firm pillow. He seems kind of tense right now though. Which is weird for a guy who’s been drinking as much as he has, and who was practically a rag doll a couple minutes ago, but that’s just Kame—sometimes it seems like it takes him ages to unwind. Kame seriously needs to learn to chill the fuck out.  
  
He pokes Kame between the ribs, and Kame flinches really hard. “Relax,” Jin mumbles, snuggling his cheek against Kame’s shoulder a little and letting his arm fall across Kame's stomach. “It’s bedtime.”  
  
There’s that swallow again.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
A few minutes pass in silence.  
  
Then Jin feels the covers moving a little, and soon he feels Kame’s fingers against his arm—a sort of careful stroke at first, and then more of a brush up along toward his elbow, until he finally just settles his arm alongside Jin’s.  
  
It feels nice. More Kame-warmth is always nice. The tension is starting to go away, finally, and it makes him even easier to snuggle up to.  
  
He’s getting so comfortable and so sleepy from the alcohol that he almost doesn’t notice when Kame’s hand starts moving again—sliding up his arm a little further, until his palm is curved around Jin’s shoulder, inside the sleeve of his t-shirt. That feels nice too though. Cozy. He mumbles appreciatively and turns his face up a little, pressing his nose closer to Kame’s neck.  
  
There’s warm breath against his face, and he doesn’t really think about it, and then there are warm lips against his—a tentative press, and then a shaky breath and a slightly firmer one, and  _oh god what the holy fucking shit is going on_ —  
  
His eyes snap open and he scrambles away, heart racing, blinking against the dark. He can just make out Kame’s startled expression in the dim light, and it’s such a mirror of how freaked  _he_  feels that for a crazy moment he half wonders if there was someone else in the room a minute ago molesting both of them, and this is all just some kind of weird misunderstanding.  
  
“You—what—you—”  
  
He can’t make words. His head is too fuzzy and his heart is too fast and Kame was kissing him.  
  
Oh, god. Kame was kissing him.  
  
Kame’s eyes are getting wider and wider in the dark. His mouth is open, and he looks like he’s trying to say something, but nothing is coming out.  
  
“What the hell are you  _doing_?” Jin shrieks, and even he’s a little scared by how loud and high-pitched it comes out, but Kame looks like Jin just slapped him.  
  
“Shit,” Kame says, blinking. Then he covers his face with both hands and curls away from Jin moaning “shit, shit, shit,” and Jin wonders if he’s going to be sick on the carpet. There’s a little thud as Kame slides off the bed and stumbles on his feet. He sort of stares around looking lost, like the walls aren’t where he thought they were, and he still looks a little bit like he might throw up.  
  
“Kame—”  
  
“Don’t,” Kame says, waving a hand in a panicked sort of gesture as he snatches his jeans off the chair and struggles them on. “Just—oh fuck, please don’t.”  
  
“What the—I don’t—”  
  
But Kame immediately heads for the doorway, totally ignoring Jin’s useless stammering. Belatedly, Jin stumbles out from underneath the covers to follow him.  
  
“I don’t get it, where are you—why did you—”  
  
“I’ll see you later,” Kame mumbles in a voice so low and shaky Jin can barely even hear it. Before Jin can get a hand out to stop him, Kame has yanked the door open and pulled it shut behind him, leaving Jin alone in the confused silence.  
  
Jin stares at the door for a while longer, but it doesn’t make him any less confused. He turns in a slow circle, eyes sweeping over the couch and the rest of the room until he’s facing the bedroom again. It still seems surreal.  
  
Did that actually just happen? Maybe it was the booze.  
  
Maybe it will all make sense in the morning.  
  
*      *      *  
  
In the morning, Jin feels like crap.  
  
He spent half the night running over the whole bizarre scene in his mind, and the more sober he got, the more he felt like an asshole. By the time the light starts creeping in through his window he’s had about two hours’ sleep and he doesn’t think he’s likely to get any more.  
  
At nine-thirty, when he thinks it’s maybe at least close to a decent hour, he calls Kame.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Jin says, before Kame can even say hello.  
  
There’s a long pause.  
  
“Me too,” Kame says eventually.  
  
Jin is surprised how good it feels to hear him say that. His voice is a little scratchy, maybe, not unusual after a night out, but—Jin doesn’t even know what he was expecting. That he would sound…different, or something? That maybe he would just hang up? That Jin would call and find out that this number now directed him to some stranger’s phone? It almost wouldn’t have been surprising—that’s how weird it was, last night.  
  
But, no. The world is still turning, the sun is rising in the east, and Kame is still at this number, with a scratchy throat and an apology.  
  
And maybe Jin has blown this way out of proportion. They were both really drunk, and stuff happens when you’re drunk, and he was the one who sort of flew off the handle anyway—he can’t really blame Kame for being freaked out by his…freaking out.  
  
“Seriously,” he rushes on, a relieved hitch in his chest, “I’m really sorry for screaming at you like that. That was horrible. I just…you really surprised me. I mean, I’m not—well, you know that, obviously. And I totally get it—we were drunk or whatever, and I shouldn’t have made such a big deal out of it. People do stupid things when they’re drunk. It’s totally not a big deal.”  
  
There’s another long silence.  
  
This time there’s nothing at the end of it.  
  
Jin frowns a little. That anxious feeling is starting to close in on him again a little bit more with each moment Kame stays quiet.  
  
Did they get cut off?  
  
“Kame?”  
  
“Yeah,” Kame says quickly—kind of too brightly, like Jin has just pulled him back from somewhere. “Yes, no problem—sorry, you’re right, that was really stupid. I…yeah,” Kame says. His voice sounds a bit weirder this time though. Sort of…flat. Or something.  
  
Jin frowns a little bit more, and…he’s not really sure what to do. He’s not sure what he’s doing wrong. He apologized. Did he really freak Kame out that much with the screaming?  
  
“Is everything okay?”  
  
“I’m fine,” Kame says quickly—but it’s still sort of flat. Stuck, maybe. “Everything is fine. Like you said, we were drunk. People do stupid things when they’re drunk.”  
  
It sounds weirder each time Kame says it, like he’s turning it over in his mind, but Jin doesn’t get  _why_ , when—why isn’t it better?  
  
He doesn’t know what question to ask next either—because he doesn’t really think Kame sounds fine, exactly, but he’s not getting very far with the “are you okay” tack. It’s weird that they’re agreeing on everything and Jin still feels like something is missing.  
  
“Hey,” he nudges. “It’s really not a big deal, okay? I’m not mad at you. I swear.”  
  
“Okay,” Kame says quietly.  
  
It’s still not good enough—but Jin isn’t sure what he wants to hear either. He’s apologized, Kame says it’s okay. Isn’t that usually enough?  
  
“Are you mad at me?” he asks.  
  
“No,” Kame says—too quickly again, but then he falls silent.  
  
For a while it seems like he wants to say something more, but then…he doesn’t.  
  
“Okay,” Jin says.  
  
He fidgets with the edge of the duvet and listens to the silence on the other end of the line, wondering what he’s supposed to say next. He doesn’t usually have trouble figuring out what to say to Kame. He doesn’t like the feeling.  
  
It scares him a little.  
  
Kame clears his throat. “Look, um, I should probably go, I have a…yeah, anyway, I should go. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”  
  
Jin nods, too eager to be agreeable to remember Kame can’t see him. “Okay. Talk to you later.”  
  
After they hang up, Jin puts his phone on the nightstand and slides back down under the covers again, curling up to stare at it. That didn’t help as much as he’d hoped.  
  
Whatever, give it a few days. Maybe it will be less weird if he gives it a few days.  
  
*      *      *  
  
It’s only a tech rehearsal, so there’s a lot of waiting around. Half the time they’re just standing on the stage where the spike marks are while the guys fiddle with the lights, or practicing little bits of choreo in the aisles while the junior chorus is figuring out what order they’re supposed to be in for the intro. Kame has been poring over his script for the sketch in the second half like it’s fucking Shakespeare and he seems kind of…twitchy. It’s really getting on Jin’s nerves.  
  
There are food tables set up at the back of the auditorium, but they’ve been pretty much picked over by the horde of younger juniors by the time Jin gets down from the stage again after his mic check. He selects a tunafish sandwich and puts it on a plate along with some slightly wrinkled grapes that he’s probably not really going to eat.  
  
Kame is in one of the auditorium seats, second to last row. His script is lying on the seat next to him, and he’s picking at a wilted salad, watching Kisumai argue over who was supposed to be in the front row for this number. Jin sits down next to him, leaving a seat empty between them.  
  
“Hey,” he says.  
  
Kame glances over, but seems to regret it halfway, because his eyes are on the stage again. “Hey,” he says, nodding a little. Totally cool. And…nothing.  
  
Right, okay. Whatever, Jin can do it himself.  
  
“So what’s your call time for the interviews tomorrow? Cause I heard about this noodle place in Asakusa that’s supposedly got like fifty different toppings you can mix and match, and if we’re done at kind of the same time I was thinking maybe we could go get some food after or something.”  
  
“Yeah,” Kame nods, glancing down at his salad and then kind of up at…the ceiling? Then back at the stage. “Maybe.”  
  
Maybe. Well, that’s…something.  
  
“I mean, I have this thing tomorrow, so I’m not sure if it’ll work out, but—yeah, maybe. We’ll see.”  
  
Lying. Lying  _so fucking bad_.  
  
Now he’s looking at the door over on the other side of the auditorium. Which wouldn’t be that weird if anything were happening over there, but that entire side of the room is empty, and there’s nothing there to actually see. Except not-Jin.  
  
Jin frowns at him. “What are you doing?”  
  
“What do you mean, what am I doing?” Kame gives him kind of weird a half-glance, and there’s a little twitch of his mouth that’s…really not convincing.  
  
Jin frowns a bit more. “Are you still mad at me?”  
  
Kame throws a nervous glance over his shoulder—then shrugs like that didn’t just happen and keeps picking the tomatoes out of his salad. “I wasn’t mad at you. The whole thing was just a stupid mistake, right?”  
  
“Right.”  
  
“Okay then.”  
  
Jin still doesn’t go back to his sandwich. Kame is chewing on a single piece of lettuce and staring at the lighting equipment propped across the chairs a few rows ahead, as if he’s really interested in building a rig with just that particular shape for his living room, if only he can figure out what size bolts they use.  
  
“Why are you being weird?”  
  
There’s that weird look again. Like  _Jin_  is the weird one here. Like he’s imagining it or something, and he knows he isn’t.  
  
He should probably just drop it. Drop the whole thing, because whatever. He’s probably pushing too hard anyway, and Kame is fidgeting with his plastic fork like his fingers think it’s chopsticks, and that’s…also weird. He hasn’t eaten more than two bites since Jin sat down, just keeps fishing out the tiny tomatoes and dropping them in the spare bowl on his lap. Jin isn’t even sure what he wants Kame to say, and it’s not like he actually wants to talk about it any more than they already have, it’s just…something’s  _missing_.  
  
“I’m not being weird.”  
  
_You are. You are so being weird and you fucking know it._  
  
_If you’re mad at me, just tell me._  
  
He almost says it. But even in his head it sounds whiny and weak, and he just can’t. Not when Kame won’t even look at him.  
  
“Whatever,” he says instead, pushing down the quivery feeling and deciding not to give a damn. Kame will get over it, whatever it is, and then it will be fine again. Probably.  
  
He takes a bite of the sandwich and…kind of regrets it. Whoever made this crap must have a weird fetish for warm mayo and stale bread.  
  
He drops the sandwich back on his plate and sets it on the chair between them. “I’m going to go get a melon pan—the tunafish sucks. You want anything?”  
  
“Hm?” Kame almost looks at him again. Almost. “No thanks, I’m fine.”  
  
Jin glances at the salad. Which Kame still isn’t really eating.  
  
“I’ll bring you back a nikuman.”  
  
“I said I’m fine.”  
  
“You’re  _not_  fine, this food is disgusting and you’re barely eating it. We’ve got like six more hours of this.”  
  
Kame’s eyes flash at him. “What are you, my—” And then he chokes to a stop.  
  
Twitching again.  
  
What the fuck?  
  
“What is going on with you?” Jin says, incredulous.  
  
“Just…leave me alone, okay?”  
  
Kame stops pretending he’s eating the salad and drops it on top of the bowl of rejected tomatoes. He stops pretending he’s interested in the lighting or the rehearsal either. And he still doesn’t look at Jin.  
  
“Fine,” Jin says.  
  
He pushes the auditorium door a little harder than he really needs to on the way out.   
  
*      *      *

 _Summer_  
  
“Can I ask you something?”  
  
Pi looks up from his bowl, cheeks bulging more than usual with Jin’s mother’s beef stew. Jin’s mom always sends him home with leftovers whenever he goes over there for dinner, and they usually end up sitting in the fridge until there’s a late night out when they all find themselves hungry after most places have closed for the night. Kusano has already fallen asleep in a plate of karaage on the floor over by the TV. Ryo is off in the kitchen digging for more.  
  
“Do you think it’s weird when I hug you?”  
  
Pi’s face twitches in blank confusion. “Is this about that time I sneezed in your face? Because I swear that was just an unfortunate coincidence.”  
  
“I’m serious,” Jin grumbles, poking at his noodles. The shrimp is kind of gross and rubbery by now, especially after he accidentally set the microwave for three minutes instead of thirty seconds. But it doesn’t matter that much—anything he puts in his mouth tastes like beer right now anyway.  
  
“Serious about what?”  
  
Jin just scowls into his noodles, annoyed that Pi can’t just…read his mind, or whatever. Reach in and pluck out all the half-finished thoughts and nagging suspicions and put them in some kind of order. Make sense of it all for him.  _There. See? That’s how it is. Now you know._  
  
Kame still says he isn’t mad, and Jin’s stopped asking him, because it never led anywhere good. It never led anywhere at all. And fine, maybe he’s not—it wouldn’t be like him to hold a grudge this long over something stupid like that, especially after Jin’s apologized and everything. But still, every time Jin walks into a room it’s like he can feel Kame going stiff, shutting off, and it’s just so…so…  
  
It’s not like Jin can argue Kame never talks to him at all. Just last week they had a pretty long conversation about beetroot juice and what you’re supposed to do with it, and it made him really kind of happy. And then he felt totally pathetic, gathering little scraps of pointless conversation like a squirrel storing nuts for fucking winter, and when Jin got back to the dressing room to find that Kame had cleared out already, Jin didn’t even try to catch up with him and ask him if he was hungry and wanted to grab a bite.  
  
That’s exactly it though. Kame is there, but he’s not. He says he’s fine, but he’s  _not_ , and it’s not like he won’t talk to Jin at all, but there’s this wall there. And Jin still doesn’t get it, and now he’s starting to wonder.  
  
He’s starting to wonder if maybe it was him.  
  
He knows he can get sort of…clingy, with people he’s close to. Especially when he’s drunk. And especially with Kame. It’s not something he’s ever thought much about—there’s no  _reason_  for it, it’s just the way he is. It just seemed to fit with them. Kame feels cozy like that, and Jin likes to be cozy. And he thought it was fine—Kame seemed fine with it, never seriously complained when Jin would pull him around or tug on bits of him to get his attention or use him as a human body pillow. It never seemed weird to him before, but now he wonders if maybe it  _was_  weird. Maybe…Kame thought it was weird too. And maybe he also thought it was something else.  
  
How do you  _explain_  that?  
  
It would probably be easier to sort this all out in his head right now if he hadn’t been drinking for the last four hours—but then all the times he’s tried to bring this up with Pi when he hasn’t been drinking for four hours he’s chickened out, so that wouldn’t be likely to work out much better.  
  
“Do I send, like…signals?”  
  
Pi blinks at him again, brow twitching inward. “What kind of signals?”  
  
“Like… _gay_  signals?”  
  
“…Eh?”  
  
“I mean, like…” dammit—words are  _hard_ , “…if I told you to come to bed with me, would you kiss me?”  
  
Pi stares some more. “Okay, now you’re definitely sending gay signals.”  
  
Jin growls at him. Pi is not making this any easier. “I’m not  _asking_ , I’m just— I just mean— I mean, if I said something like that—if I, you know, got  _close_  to you like that, would you…get the wrong idea?”  
  
“No,” Pi says unequivocally.  
  
Jin lets out a breath.  
  
It’s amazing how much that helps. He’s been driving himself kind of crazy over this thing, because it’s like suddenly Kame is half a world away even when they’re in the same room, and he can’t figure out why, unless it was something like this. Something he did. But maybe…maybe he really is just crazy after all. Maybe it isn’t him—maybe Kame really  _is_  just distracted by…family stuff, or whatever, and it’s bad timing, and Jin has built this all up in his mind, or maybe it’s just…something else. Or something.  
  
“But I might if I were gay.”  
  
Jin stops.  
  
Pi slurps up another bite of stew.  
  
“What do you mean, you might if you were gay?”  
  
“I mean,” Pi says, gesturing vaguely with his spoon, “that I’m not attracted to you like that, and you know that, and you’re not attracted to me like that, and I know that—oh god, wait, you’re not, are you?”  
  
Jin gives him a flat look.  
  
“Just checking,” Pi says, lifting a hand. “Anyway, if I  _did_  feel that way about you, and you were all…cozying up to me and stuff like the needy weirdo that you are, and I wanted it to mean something—then, yeah. I think I’d definitely take that as a signal.”  
  
Jin stares down at his noodles. Suddenly he’s lost his appetite.  
  
Actually, he feels a bit ill. The combination of an alcohol buzz and that sort of cold feeling you get when you get really bad news kind of sucks. Maybe sober would have been better after all.  
  
“That’s not fair,” Jin whines. “How can I be sending signals based on something I don’t even know about?”  
  
Pi shrugs as he scrapes the bottom of his bowl for the last few bites of stew. “It’s not fair. But people are weird, and life isn’t fair.”  
  
“You’re such a fucking comfort.”  
  
Pi grins. “I try.”  
  
Jin pokes at his noodles, but he can’t quite convince himself to take another bite. The smell is sort of mixing with the sick feeling in his stomach and making it worse. He leans forward and drops the container on the coffee table, slumping back into the cushions with a heavy sigh.  
  
“It’s Kamenashi, right?” Pi says. He’s politely focused on his stew, and Jin doesn’t answer. He doesn’t really need to, and he probably shouldn’t.  
  
*      *      *  
  
Koki is being a dick, chasing Ueda around with a plate of sweet buns and telling him “no seriously, they’re the meat flavored ones, take a big bite.” The photographer is apologizing to Watsuki-san about the delays as he tries to get the replacement lens fitted and the lighting guys move stuff around so they can skip to the third setup. Watsuki-san glances pointedly at her watch, and there are more apologies as the guys with the couch accidently bump her in the leg.  
  
Kame isn’t paying any attention to Watsuki-san or the lighting or the spread laid out for them—even the squid dumplings. He loves squid dumplings. Jin’s seen him cram four of them in his mouth at once and nearly spit them right back out again because he was too busy laughing to chew.  
  
The guy standing at the opposite end of the room right now doesn’t look like he’d know how to do either one. He looks like he hasn’t eaten in days, but he also looks sort of pale and clammy, like he might be sick if he tried. Even the makeup doesn’t help.  
  
Jin wants to go over there and cram them in his mouth anyway, because for fuck’s sake, people die from not eating, and it’s not like he can’t, it’s not like there’s  _nothing to eat_. He just won’t.  
  
But he can’t do that. It’s all rolling around in his head now, stuff about whose-fault and what happened and  _why_ , and…he  _wants_  to, but…  
  
He can’t. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what won’t make it worse.  
  
He sidles over to Nakamaru, who’s got his nose in a book about…ants, or something. There’s a big picture of a bug on the front. Jin nudges him with an elbow.  
  
“Has he eaten anything?” Jin asks, nodding toward Kame, who’s gone all bright and too-happy now, because Koki is trying to get him in on torturing Ueda.  
  
“Who, Ueda?” Nakamaru says.  
  
Jin shakes his head. “No—I mean Kame. Has he eaten?”  
  
Nakamaru gives Jin a curious look. “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?”  
  
Jin shrugs, ignoring the question. “No, I was just—I don’t think he’s touched the food, and…the dumplings are really good.” He avoids Nakamaru’s eyes, because even he can hear how lame that was, but whatever. “I have to…go to the bathroom, but you should, you know, tell him to eat. The dumplings. Because they taste good, I mean—he likes the squid ones.”  
  
Nakamaru is looking gradually more suspicious, but Jin just shrugs again, ruffling the hair at the back of his neck—and then smoothing it down again, because he’ll catch hell from the makeup lady for that. “Anyway, I have to take a piss. I’ll be back before they finish setting up.”  
  
He turns and heads briskly for the doorway, hoping it’s the right direction for the restroom—he thinks so, but he hasn’t actually been there at this studio before. When he gets to the doorway, he pauses briefly to peer back towards the table. Nakamaru is putting a couple of the shrimp dumplings on a plate.  
  
This is not okay.  
  
*      *      *  
  
The studio is packed to the gills—par for the course on a recording day, but Jin still feels annoyed and unwieldy trying to navigate between all the younger juniors doing stretches and goofing off and squeezing in last minute practice in the halls.  
  
The tiny little dressing room assigned to KAT-TUN is way down at the end, and it’s half-full when he gets there. Nakamaru is in the corner in a pair of shiny silver pants and a brown argyle sweater reading over his copy of the running order again and making notes in the margins. Taguchi is dressed and doing his own stretches with one leg up against the wall. Ueda is fussing with his hair at the mirror. Kame’s not around. Jin recognizes his bag sitting in the corner though.  
  
“You okay?” Nakamaru asks as Jin shrugs his own bag off over his head and starts to get dressed. He’s a little behind schedule, and the look Ueda gives him in the mirror says it hasn’t gone unnoticed.  
  
“I’m fine.” He’s not really fine, but the things that aren’t fine about him are not really things he wants to discuss in this company.  
  
He glances over at Kame’s bag, slumped in the corner of the makeup table all sad and lonely and a little bit sparkly.  
  
They really need to talk.  
  
He finishes dressing as quickly as he can, does a quick pass with the makeup and hair stuff at the mirror, but he doesn’t really care how he looks. He doesn’t have time for this right now.  
  
“Hey, Jin, our call is in—” Nakamaru stops him as he heads for the door.  
  
“I know,” Jin says. “I’ll meet you guys there, okay? I just have to…find Pi. To give him something. I mean, I borrowed it and I have to give it back.”  
  
Nakamaru gives him a quizzical look, and Jin realizes with a bit of a flush that he’s not carrying anything and the costume he is currently wearing has no functional pockets.  
  
Whatever.  
  
He needs to find Kame.  
  
*      *      *  
  
In the end, he actually does find Pi. Or rather, Pi finds him, and somehow fishhooks him into a debate about suspenders as a fashion accessory in which Pi is sorely outnumbered by the rest of NEWS, and by the time Jin manages to get out of that, he has to head straight to the wings. The first time he finds Kame it’s at center stage, in the middle of the opening choreography, doing hip rolls and backflips and winking at the girls in the front row. And not looking at Jin.  
  
Every time they make their exit, somehow he disappears again.  
  
When the recording is over, Jin hurries back to the dressing room again, wading through the sparkling crowd in hopes of catching Kame before he can spirit himself away again. When he gets there, Koki and Taguchi are both there, but Kame is not.  
  
Kame’s bag is still in the corner though.  
  
Jin takes his time getting changed, chatting a little with Nakamaru about the weekend and teasing Koki about the choreo he fucked up during their second number. Even once he’s finished dressing, he flops down at one end of the little two-seater couch squeezed into the corner and dawdles over his phone for a while, pretending to be engrossed in a texting conversation until the others have all filed out. Kame’s bag is still there.  
  
Fifteen minutes later, the door finally opens and Kame strides in.  
  
He heads straight for the makeup table, digging around in his bag for his clothes and shrugging off the silver jacket of his costume. When he finally glances up at the mirror he gives a startled jerk.  
  
His eyes are kind of…big. Just for a second though, because then he’s looked away again, glancing around at the mostly-empty counter. “Um—shit, I think I forgot my— I should go grab—”  
  
“Wait,” Jin says, jumping to his feet and putting himself between Kame and the door—because he knows that if he lets him out of his sight now, he won’t find him alone again. He catches Kame looking at the door longingly past his shoulder and has to tamp down the whiny  _why do you hate being around me so much?_  in his chest so he can be the rational person here for a bit, because he needs to. If he doesn’t, no one will—and this is important.  
  
“I, um—I thought we should talk.”  
  
Kame gives a twitchy blink. He glances back toward the couch, like he’s half hoping to find Taguchi sitting there or something—but there’s no one. “What about?”  
  
“About…that thing that happened. At my place, when you were—when we—”  
  
Kame turns abruptly back to the makeup table and starts rummaging in his bag again. “That again? I said I’m fine, already—what is there to talk about?” he says, his voice probably not as easy as he wants it to be. “Just drop it.”  
  
“I don’t want to drop it.”  
  
Kame doesn’t say anything. He just keeps digging around in that bag of his and coming up empty. Whatever he’s looking for in there must be buried down deep.  
  
“Kame…”  
  
Finally he sighs. Drops the bag back on the counter and just stands there, facing away from Jin. His shoulders are kind of hunched in on themselves, and the little sliver of his face Jin can see in the mirror looks pale and tired again.  
  
“What do you want?”  
  
It comes out sort of plaintive, and Jin wants to whine back at him, wants to say “I want it to be like it used to be”—but he’s not sure anymore what it used to be. Not sure he didn’t have it wrong from the start. And that maybe scares him even more than the idea that Kame is just pissed at him for no reason. That there is a reason, and he can’t fix it.  
  
He just needs to know.  
  
“Are you gay?”  
  
It sounds really weird out loud. Really weird and scary, like it echoes from every corner of the room, and Jin doesn’t know how to soften it. It’s out there now.  
  
“I mean,” he fumbles on. He’s not really sure where he’s going, but Kame isn’t saying anything, and the silence gets scarier every minute. And anyway, he started this. “I don’t…I’m not judging you or anything, I just. If I…gave you the wrong idea, or whatever—”  
  
“Can you please just stop,” Kame says in a small voice.  
  
Jin swallows. He’s talking now. But it isn’t less scary.  
  
“But don’t you think we should—”  
  
“Jin,  _stop_.”  
  
“But I don’t know how to help if you won’t at least—”  
  
“I don’t need any help.”  
  
“Yes you do.”  
  
“I  _don’t_.”  
  
“Kazuya—”  
  
“Leave me  _alone_ , Akanishi.”  
  
It stings. It stings like fuck. Jin stops.  
  
“This is work,” Kame mumbles. Twitchy again—maybe trying to take it back a little, but not trying very hard. He looks around for something, snatches a moist towelette out of the dispenser and starts wiping off his makeup in the mirror, eyes lowered. “Don’t bring your personal problems in here.”  
  
Jin stares at his face in the mirror, a little raw where he rubs too hard. The angles are so sharp and stiff these days. Kame has always been a bean pole, always had a strange face with that crooked nose and high cheekbones and those over-plucked eyebrows, but Jin’s never noticed it like this before. The angles seem to get sharper the longer he looks. It’s creepy. Jin tries to shake off the image.  
  
Kame won’t look at him.  
  
“My personal problems,” Jin repeats dully.  
  
Kame tosses the facial wipe in the trash and unscrews a bottle of moisturizer from his bag. He puts a little dab of it on his fingertips and starts rubbing it into his skin. He still won’t look at Jin.  
  
He doesn’t look like Kame anymore either.  
  
“Fuck you,” Jin says.  
  
He snatches up his bag and walks out.  
  
*      *      *  
  
_Fall_  
  
There are absolutely no potato chips.  
  
Jin has been trolling up and down the aisles for nearly forty-five minutes and he still can’t find any sign of them. He likes this supermarket because it’s a little bit more out of the way, which has become a surprising necessity ever since Gokusen, even this many months after, but they’re not nearly as well-stocked as the bigger one near the main road when it comes to cool things from overseas. As long as he only wants to buy miso and natto and fresh squid he’s all set.  
  
He gives up on the potato chips eventually, settling for six boxes of pocky instead (they were on sale), and makes his way up to the checkout counter. There are three little old ladies in front of him. Two of them are chattering to one another about their granddaughters (one has just married a wealthy doctor with excellent prospects, the other is poised to be the next CEO of some kind of zaibatsu from the way the woman makes it sound) and not really paying attention to the attendant checking out their groceries. It doesn’t really matter though, because the attendant is older than any of them, and Jin could write a very sleepy ballad to the rhythm of the beeps coming from the checkout machine.  
  
He scratches the back of his neck underneath the wool cap and shifts his weight, trying not to show his impatience. There are other drawbacks to keeping a low profile, in addition to the lack of potato chips.  
  
As Zaibatsu-obaa-chan humblebrags to her friend about the beautiful “and very convenient and practical” new car her granddaughter just bought for her parents, Jin scans the magazine stand beside him. Not as many familiar faces as you’d think, but then it’s not really that kind of store either. There are a couple though.  
  
Kame and Pi. Dressed like twins and grinning at the camera, all chummy with their arms around each other’s shoulders. You’d hardly believe Kame once called Pi a smug talentless douchebag while Pi kicked sand and tried to break Kame’s nose. (Again.)  
  
Jin presses his lips together and turns away. Seems Doctor-obaa-chan’s granddaughter has recently announced that she’s pregnant. And it’s going to be a boy.  
  
He’s seen the picture before. He’s seen the magazine before. He’s heard the stupid song on the radio twelve times a week, don’t they ever get tired of playing it?  
  
It’s not a big deal. It’s not any kind of a deal—Jin knows it’s just the job, and that’s how it goes. He’s not even really sure why it makes him angry in the first place, because when he thinks about it rationally it seems like a stupid thing to get angry about. Kame didn’t decide this, and neither did Pi. They told him it was part of the deal, and Kame is doing it because they asked him to, and that’s that. It’s not like the rest of them are on the shelf because Kame wants to go solo or something.  
  
He’s not angry about the stupid song.  
  
He’s not really angry at all, it’s just…something twinges. And it twinges a little more every time he sees Kame’s stupid face grinning up at him next to Pi’s.  
  
When he’s finally finished paying for his groceries, Jin takes the long way round so he can pass through the park and buy an ice cream cone. The sun flickers between the branches overhead as he wanders along the pathway, licking at the cool sweetness and soaking up the last warmth of summer.  
  
He flicks his phone open and pages through his messages. Two from Ryo, trying to sync up plans for this weekend. One from Pi, with a dorky selfie of him making a cross with his tongue, because he said he could do it and Jin said he was bullshitting and Pi had to prove it. Nothing else.  
  
He’s finished his ice cream by the time he gets home, drops the sticky remains of the wrapper and a little stubby bit of cone in the trash can outside his building. He lets himself into the apartment and puts away his groceries, realizing too late that the frozen gyoza he bought probably would have preferred it if he had taken a more direct route home—but whatever, they’ll survive. He checks the voicemail on the landline, but only his mother and Pi’s great-aunt ever call that one, and he just saw his mom the other day, so there isn’t anything new.  
  
Jin flops down on the couch and turns on the TV, keeping the volume low because he doesn’t really plan to pay attention to it.  
  
He pulls out his phone again and starts flipping through the names, his free hand digging into one of the boxes of pocky. Not as good as potato chips, but they’ll do.  
  
The phone rings a couple of times in his ear before Pi picks up.  
  
“Hey.”  
  
“Your face looks ridiculous,” Jin says in greeting.  
  
“Well, you would know, wouldn’t you,” Pi replies distractedly. There’s stuff going on in the background, voices and things moving around. “What’s up?”  
  
“I need you to bring me potato chips.”  
  
Pi laughs. “Buy them yourself, lazy ass.”  
  
“I  _tried_ ,” Jin whines, munching on another pocky stick. There’s a car exploding on his TV screen, some kind of action movie trailer—dubbed. He doesn’t think he’s seen this one before though, it looks good. Probably been out in the States for like a year already. They get all the good movies in America. “The store didn’t have any. And there were these little old ladies who took forever to get through the line, and now I’m traumatized and I never want to leave the house again.”  
  
“My heart aches with sympathy.”  
  
“I knew you’d understand,” Jin drawls. “You on the set? It sounds noisy.”  
  
Pi’s reply is interrupted by a loud beeping sound, like a piece of machinery backing up right beside him. Something moves around again, and then the sound is muffled. “Yeah, it’s pretty busy around here. There was some kind of problem with the lighting rig, so we’re on standby until they fix it. Probably won’t be done until late.”  
  
Jin nods, nibbling thoughtfully at the end of his stick. The news is back on now, people standing awkwardly behind desks and talking about the newspaper headlines being shown up on the screen. The sound is too low for Jin to hear what they’re saying, but it’s something about the stock market. It went up. Or possibly down.  
  
“How’s Kame?” he asks.  
  
“Exhausted,” Pi says ruefully. “They’re really working him to the bone. Seriously, I’m worn out myself and he’s in twice as many scenes as I am. I think he had a 3 a.m. call yesterday.”  
  
“Ouch.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
There’s a brief pause.  
  
“Do you want to talk to him? I think he’s in the other room having his makeup redone or something.”  
  
“No,” Jin says. He nibbles a little more pocky, then wrinkles his nose at the thing, annoyed at it for not being a potato chip.  
  
It’s not that it’s bad. It’s just not the same.  
  
“No, don’t worry about it. I’ll see him on Thursday, we’ve got a taping.”  
  
He only wishes he were looking forward to it.  
  
“Okay,” Pi says. “Listen, I’d better get going—I want to grab something to eat before they call us back to the set. It’ll be after midnight, but I’ll see if I can get the driver to stop off for potato chips on the way home.”  
  
“My hero,” Jin sighs.  
  
“Later.”  
  
Jin tosses the phone onto the couch next to him. He starts to bring the pocky stick back to his mouth again, but by now he’s thoroughly gone off it, and he really wants something salty and yummy and comforting and…not this.  
  
*      *      *  
  
_Spring_  
  
It’s bright up here on stage when everything else is dark—even brighter when the light catches the costumes, almost blinding when he makes the mistake of trying to look at someone else.  
  
The dome shudders with the screams, and it’s powerful, and it’s terrifying. It doesn’t stay here either—it’s everywhere he is now, and he can’t get away from it. It follows him wherever he goes—follows him to the conbini down the street from rehearsal to make sure he’s not eating junk food and putting on weight, follows him home at night to find out where he lives and who he lives with, follows him to Roppongi with girls and guys and makes up stories to fit snapshots that don’t even look like him.  
  
It used to be fun. He’s not sure when it stopped being fun.  
  
Kame is at the other end of the stage. He doesn’t seem so bothered, but then Jin isn’t sure he would know anymore. Kame is too far away. Jin knows he’s exhausted—he’d  _have_  to be exhausted—but he’s got himself on such a tight leash now it doesn’t even show the way it used to, and Jin would probably be the last person he’d show it to anyway. He’s crooning into the microphone and playing to the crowd, pushing himself higher and farther and faster, reflecting the stage lights in every direction like that makes it all his and not something they picked for him, not out of his control, and Jin…  
  
Jin just wants to lie down somewhere dark and cool and sleep.  
  
*      *      *  
  
_Summer_  
  
Johnny’s office is smaller than one would expect. It has big windows along one wall, but it’s not even a corner—he gave all those ones to the senior managers—and the furniture is an odd collection of mismatched pieces that look like they probably would have been fancy and corporate in a movie from the seventies, but now they just sort of look…old. Comfortable though. He’s got baseball posters and group photos and albums all over the walls. KAT-TUN is up in the corner behind the desk with a plaque for their first Million single, next to a picture of Kanjani8 all dressed like hippies.  
  
Jin tries to keep from slumping into the chair opposite the empty desk, tries not to just curl up in it, because he will definitely fall asleep. He can only ever sleep when he’s not supposed to these days. At night he just lies awake, dreading the morning.  
  
He can’t even go to the sleepy supermarket with the natto and the old ladies anymore. He has to get everything delivered, and he still checks through the peephole just to prepare himself if it looks like the delivery guy might be the type to recognize him. Most of them are harmless, asking for autographs he can’t give and pictures he can’t take and gushing over how much they love his music, but some are downright scary, and even the nice ones feel oppressive after a while. It’s gotten so bad he practically flinches every time someone passes him too closely on the sidewalk.  
  
He used to love talking about music, especially his own. Now he dreads anything to do with it.  
  
It sucks.  
  
Jin jolts out of a light doze when the door opens behind him. He straightens up a little in his chair and shakes his bangs out of his face, following the old man with his eyes as he crosses over to the desk and distributes a few things to different piles. He doesn’t want to interrupt—it’s better just to wait.  
  
Johnny hums over a couple of manila envelopes, weighing them for a moment. Then he drops one on a stack to his left and slips the other in a drawer. Finally he settles down in his chair and looks at Jin.  
  
“So, Akanishi-kun,” he says, with that mild little smile he always uses for the ones he likes. The golden boys, the ones who sell. “What can I do for you?”  
  
Jin glances down at the desk, shifting a bit in his chair. He feels like he’s sinking down into it again, trying to stay afloat.  
  
This was easier in his head. It might be easier to just say it’s nothing, just keep going with the flow. Stay afloat until the worst is over. That’s what Pi keeps telling him to do.  
  
But the thing is—what if that’s never?  
  
“I’m sorry,” Jin says. “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”  
  
*      *      *


	2. 2006

_Winter_  
  
The smoke curls in a long tail toward the ceiling as sweat cools on his skin. He blinks up at it lazily, watching it swirl a little in the draft from the air vent, and gradually dissipate.  
  
He’s only got a thin sheet pulled across his hips, and that would normally be a bit light for mid-January, even in southern California—but it was warm enough in here when they started and it’s pretty much sweltering now. Jin can’t tell anymore if the flush burning beneath his skin is still from the drinks or from everything else.  
  
He can’t remember the guy’s name. He’s pretty sure it starts with a B, but it got lost somewhere in the music and he never got around to asking him to repeat it. It would be awkward now. The guy remembers his name—he said it over and over. Jin felt a bit guilty not being able to return the favor, but then the guy’s hand was on him and he stopped caring about anything else. Now he feels guilty again.  
  
He hears the water running in the bathroom sink, briefly. A few moments later the door opens, and Guy is moving around the room a bit in Jin’s peripheral vision, picking up a pack of cigarettes from the desk and then crumpling it up and dropping it in the wastebasket. The mattress bounces a little when he settles himself on the edge of the bed, slides his feet underneath the sheet.  
  
“Can I have a drag?”  
  
He’s got enough of an accent that Jin can tell he’s not from around here (and he’s pretty damn proud of himself for that, to be honest), but he isn’t really sure what kind it is. Not Japanese. Maybe some kind of Spanish? Or…Australian or something.  
  
Jin glances over at him. Guy nods at the cigarette. Jin nods back and passes it to him across the distance, watching as Guy takes a short, efficient breath before tapping the ash off over the ashtray on the nightstand. Then he passes it back to Jin.  
  
He has really nice arms. Arms and shoulders—Jin really likes arms and shoulders. This is something he’s realized ever since he started letting himself notice that he liked anything at all about the way a guy looks. It’s been sort of a weird experience, actually—like developing a whole new sense. Like all his life he’s only been seeing the world through one eye, and now he’s discovered he has two.  
  
Guy’s arms are firm and toned, with a really nice shape to them but not too much bulk. His shoulders are broader than Jin’s, which Jin finds sort of irritating when he’s doing comparisons, but really gratifying when he’s being held, so it’s kind of a double-edged sword. His skin is smooth like cocoa butter, dark stubble scattered across his jaw. Jin can’t tell what race he is, but he’s not Japanese, and Jin sort of likes that too.  
  
It’s starting to feel a bit cooler again—Jin feels a little wave of goosebumps skitter up one arm and down the other, his skin still damp with sweat. He curls over onto his side and pulls the sheet up higher, tucking his feet all the way underneath. No, it’s really not warm enough anymore, and briefly he considers scooting over and seeing if Guy would mind cuddling him a bit—but that feels like maybe a step too far. He seems perfectly nice, but they’ve only just met, and Jin has already forgotten most of their conversation.  
  
“Are you cold?” Guy asks, and Jin looks up at him, feeling a bit caught.  
  
He shakes his head and smiles. “No, I’m fine. Just…stretching.”  
  
“Do you want another drink?”  
  
Jin considers this for a moment. It might be nice to have something to occupy him—but then, he’ll be leaving soon, and another drink means another twenty minutes of random small talk, and that’s hard enough to manage when he’s not post-coital.  
  
“No thanks,” he says.  
  
And really, come to think of it, that’s probably his cue to leave. If there’s no more drinking or sex on offer, he shouldn’t just take up space in this guy’s bed.  
  
Unless there’s cuddling available, of course—but Guy is reaching toward his phone now, sitting next to the ashtray, and he’s probably checking the time. Jin wonders what time it is. Late, probably.  
  
“Actually,” he says, sitting up and reaching across to stub out the cigarette, “I should probably get going.”  
  
“Yeah?” Guy glances over at him as Jin sits back again. “Okay.”  
  
It’s always weirder to get dressed again afterwards than it is to get undressed in the first place. No weirder with a guy than with a girl, he supposes—though maybe the difference is that when he was with girls they usually seemed to end up at his place instead of hers. Maybe it was just as weird for them to try to remember where their underwear landed in his bedroom, who knows. He never really thought about it—though he sometimes secretly enjoyed watching them look for stuff.  
  
Maybe that was a bit rude.  
  
Guy doesn’t make him feel watched though. Guy sits up on the other side of the bed and pulls on a pair of jeans, flicks through messages on his phone and gives him his privacy while he’s tugging on his underwear.  
  
It takes him a moment to figure out which way around the shirt is supposed to go and find his hastily discarded shoes. Guy hasn’t bothered with a shirt, Jin notices as he walks him to the door, which makes it rather difficult not to admire his arms again. Well, if admire is the right word. Now that they’re not actually in bed anymore, the tide is turning swiftly toward envy.  
  
Guy curls a hand around the back of Jin’s neck for a soft goodbye. He tastes a bit like cocoa butter too, and Jin wonders if it’s some kind of moisturizer or something. Whatever it is, it’s giving him a sudden craving for chocolate chip pancakes.  
  
They don’t bother exchanging numbers.  
  
It’s colder outside now than it was when they went in. Jin has a jacket on, but it’s more style than substance, and not quite enough to protect him from the chilly night breeze whistling down the avenue. It’s not a long walk back to his place though, and he feels the exercise will probably do him more good than standing on a corner for twenty minutes trying to hail a cab. Maybe even ward off the inevitable soreness.  
  
It was really only supposed to be a one-time thing.  
  
He was curious. Not like he went out looking for it or anything, but there was this one guy in this one bar this one time—and it was so easy. Not like he’s never had women hit on him before, but usually only the ones who know he’s famous, and not like this. This guy—he just sort of took charge, got all up in Jin’s space and made sure Jin knew what he was after, which normally Jin would hate, but on this particular occasion he found he kind of…didn’t. And he’d been drinking. And he was anonymous. And he was curious.  
  
He half expected to hit some kind of threshold, wake up somewhere in the middle of it all and be like “what the fuck am I doing with this guy’s dick in my hand”—just freak out and run, but…he didn’t. It was strange and awkward the way drunken sex with strangers always is, but it was also kind of awesome—all hot and taboo in ways he’d never even thought about, never realized he would  _like_. But even then he was sure it was really just the one time. It was just a new experience. Something he’d never done before. Something to cross off the bucket list.  
  
But then there was another bar a couple of weeks later, and another guy. And he just kind of…went with it.  
  
He pulls out his phone and checks his messages as he strolls past a darkened bookstore. There are a couple from Pi, one from Josh whining at him for disappearing so early in the evening. He doesn’t bother answering that one. There are emails from his mother and brother, but those have both been there since yesterday and can easily wait until tomorrow. It feels too weird thinking of his mother anyway when he can still feel somebody’s hands on his skin.  
  
He’s not sure exactly what it is he likes about it, if he’s honest with himself. Whenever he thinks about telling someone from back home, or even some of his friends here, he feels a bit sick and disoriented and thinks maybe he should actually give it up. Maybe he’s just gotten used to it and it’s corrupting him somehow, making him think that it’s normal and fine to get off on sucking cock or getting fucked now and then when it’s  _not_. Not for him.  
  
But. That might also be part of what he likes about it.  
  
The push and pull—the thought that flits across his mind that once would have been stamped out before was even aware of it.  _That guy’s hot. Wonder what he feels like_. It feels illicit even in his mind, and when he actually lets himself follow through…it’s addicting. Doing something that his brain tells him must be wrong and finding that his body thinks it’s right.  
  
As he wanders past the light of an all-night diner, he briefly contemplates ducking in for a burger and fries—seems like it’s been ages since he ate, and that last bar was really stingy with the munchies. But it’s cold and he’s tired too, and maybe a cup of soup or some takeout or something at his apartment would be nicer than spending another hour out in the cold.  
  
He kicks off his shoes and flips on the light when he walks in the door, checking the thermostat on the way into the living room. The apartment is a tiny bit smaller than the one he used to share with Pi, but it’s just him here, and he needed someplace furnished and close to nightlife that was available on short notice, so there weren’t many options. It’s cooler than the old one too though, and the big TV and exposed brick make up for the narrow living room and the ancient boiler system that sometimes hammers through the night.  
  
He showers first, just to get all the smoke out of his hair and all the lube from between his legs.   
  
There isn’t a whole lot left in the fridge, but now that he’s warm again he’s afraid he might fall asleep on the couch waiting for a delivery guy, so he pulls together some scrambled eggs and a bag of pretzels for a midnight snack. He eats them at the kitchen counter with his phone sitting next to him, half-reading his mother’s email.  
  
It’s about eight-thirty in the evening in Tokyo right now.  
  
It’s not exactly a homesick kind of feeling. He doesn’t miss Tokyo in any particular way, and he doesn’t really miss working or his family either, or even Pi. He misses all those things a little bit, of course—but he loves it here, and he can’t really say that he would rather be there than here at any given moment. He’s enjoying his freedom too much.  
  
Anyway, the feeling goes back farther than that.  
  
According to Nakamaru, Kame’s general failure to answer phone calls and respond to people’s messages has developed to the level of a pathology these days, but Jin knows he’s just saying that to be nice. He’s not even sure why the silence bothers him so much all of a sudden, because it’s not like it’s anything new. But at least when Jin was there and they saw each other all the time for work, it was a little easier to forget that Kame wasn’t really in his life anymore the way he used to be. Maybe they weren’t close, but at least they still had something in common.  
  
He pushes the plate of eggs aside and picks up the phone, flicking through the contacts list briskly, before he has too much time to think about it. It’s always best if he does it like this anyway—if he builds it up too much, it only gets harder.  
  
The ringing hums against his ear once, twice. After the third time, he knows the next thing he’ll hear is the voicemail.  
  
“Hey, it’s me,” Jin says, after the beep. “It’s Jin,” he corrects—because you never know, people’s voices are hard to make out on the phone. Maybe even more so from this far away. “I just…I don’t have any special reason to call or anything, just. You know. Seems like it’s been ages since I talked to you. I was wondering how you are.”  
  
It’s a hollow kind of feeling, and he’s used to it by now. But he refuses to call it guilt. It’s not like Kame was leaning on him even when he was there, he can hardly be more burdened just because Jin is gone. They’re not like that anymore.  
  
“Anyway, yeah. Call me when you get a chance. Bye.”  
  
He puts the phone back down on the counter again. Then he collects his dishes and leaves everything in the sink.  
  
Jin’s bed is much warmer and more comfortable, especially when he tucks himself in up to his chin with the nice fluffy comforter. He curls up on his side and reaches over to turn off the light. Before he settles in, he picks up his phone and flicks it on one last time just to make sure he didn’t miss anything while he was dealing with the dishes. Nothing new.  
  
The apartment is smaller than his old one back home, but the bedroom is bigger—the bed too. It’s the one thing he really doesn’t like about the place—too much empty space. He presses his face deeper into the pillow and remembers what Kame feels like.  
  
*      *      *  
  
“So, what, you’re saying everybody’s a little bit gay?” Josh smirks, settling back into his side of the booth and shaking the ice in his Red Bull and vodka. “You are so full of it, dude.”  
  
“I’m not saying ‘everybody’s a little bit gay,’” Dom argues, flicking the straw of his gin and tonic back and forth between two fingers. “I’m saying it’s a spectrum, and not everybody is at one end or the other. And stuff changes—you’re not always in the same place, or whatever.”  
  
Josh barks a laugh. “Bullshit. You’re just trying to make excuses for feeling up that girl at Zero last week.”  
  
Dom snorts a little, resigned. “You are such a douchebag.”  
  
Jin takes a sip of his beer and stares out over the dance floor. They’re playing that same song again, the one with all the “sexybacks.”  
  
“Look, I’m just saying,” Josh continues, jolting forward again and nearly knocking over one of his empty glasses with a too-broad gesture. “There’s gay, and there’s straight. If you’re gay, you fuck dudes—if you’re straight you fuck girls—”  
  
“Unless you’re a gay woman,” Dom interjects.  
  
“—and if you do something else, you’re probably just shitfaced. That’s it. All the other fuzzy, touchy-feely shit going on somewhere in the middle is just people kidding themselves, not having enough balls to, like, be whatever. There’s science and stuff, right? The gay gene thing—you either have it or you don’t. It’s in your inheritance and shit.”  
  
“What does that even mean?”  
  
But Josh isn’t paying attention anymore. “Hey,” he says, leaning over the edge of the booth and waving at a pair of women in minidresses dancing together at an only slightly more-drunk-than-friendly distance nearby. “Hey! Hey, my friend here,” he motions to Dom when they finally give him their attention, “my friend—he’s trying to convince us that everybody is a little bit gay. He says he’ll buy you each a drink if you make out with each other for thirty seconds.”  
  
“I did  _not_ —”  
  
“Shut up, man,” Jin hisses, but Josh just shushes them both and waves away their protests with a hand that almost clips Jin in the eye.  
  
The women, meanwhile, are looking at each other in silent consultation. “Any price limit?” the taller one asks.  
  
“Fifty bucks.”  
  
“ _Josh_ —” Dom protests, but a sudden wince suggests Josh must have kicked him under the table.  
  
“Fifty each, or is that total?”  
  
“Total,” Josh says. “Split it however you like.”  
  
There’s another brief consultation before the shorter one shrugs. “Done.”  
  
Jin’s mouth sort of drops open a bit when the taller one just leans in, and suddenly they’re actually standing there kissing right in front of them, swaying at the edge of the dance floor. A table of guys next to them start hooting like frat boys, and they tilt a little bit drunkenly as if they can actually feel the waves of hormones crashing over them. The shorter one’s dangly bracelet gets caught in the other’s long hair, which makes them laugh a little and get even more clumsy, but it’s still possibly the hottest thing Jin has ever seen up close. He definitely feels a little bit of a stirring.  
  
Which is kind of a relief, actually.  
  
Even if he can’t quite be sure whether it’s the  _two_  girls thing or the two  _girls_  thing.  
  
“You are such an asshole,” Dom says as the girls walk away and he puts his hand out for Josh’s reimbursement.  
  
“Totally and completely worth it,” Josh says as he digs a few bills out of his wallet, looking to Jin for agreement.  
  
“Yeah,” Jin says, trying to make it sound genuine. “It was pretty awesome.”  
  
He almost misses the look Dom gives him out of the corner of his eye. But not quite.  
  
*      *      *  
  
Jin is another few drinks down and another forty bucks in the hole by now. Josh has caught up with the taller makeout-girl at the bar and is currently angling to get her (and perhaps also her friend) back to his place for the evening. Even from here it’s obvious that it’s not going to happen, but Josh doesn’t seem to have realized that yet, and Jin doesn’t want to burst his bubble. At least it’s keeping him busy.  
  
“It’s not really ‘my theory,’” Dom says when Jin asks. Because it’s been on his mind through three beers and two gin and tonics, and he figures he might as well ask, while he’s got the lowered inhibitions and the space. Dom won’t laugh. He’s nice—not like Josh. “I mean, it’s not anything I made up or anything. I read about it somewhere and it just kind of…made sense to me.”  
  
It doesn’t make sense to Jin. But then, nothing really does anymore.  
  
“Whatever, I just—” Jin waves away. It’s hard to get his thoughts in order when his inhibitions are this low. “I mean, so you’re saying that, like, just because a guy is straight, it doesn’t mean he can’t sleep with other guys?”  
  
Dom nods thoughtfully.  
  
“I…guess? I mean, I don’t know—I’m not a psychologist or whatever. I guess I just feel like there’s a ton of other shit that comes along with calling yourself ‘straight’ or ‘gay’ or whatever that doesn’t have anything to do with who you fuck. And people are people—there’s more to how you feel about someone than whether they’ve got a dick or not.”  
  
“So…would you ever sleep with a woman?”  
  
Dom winces. “I have, but…you know. That was different. I didn’t do it cause I felt like it—I did it cause I was trying not to be something else.”  
  
Jin studies him very carefully. He has to blink a couple of times to keep him in focus, but he tries. He really tries.  
  
“How do you know?”  
  
Dom’s eyebrows twitch inwards. “How do I know what?”  
  
“I mean…how do you know if you’re…you know, doing stuff because you want to, or because you don’t want to be…something else.”  
  
Dom looks thoughtful, staring back at him. In the end he just sort of shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess you just kind of figure it out eventually. I didn’t really figure it out until after I left home.”  
  
Jin nods a bit. He takes another sip of his beer, then nods a bit more.  
  
“Jin—can I ask you a thing without you getting weird?”  
  
Jin sets his beer down again and swallows, fiddling with the corner of the napkin his glass has been sitting on. It’s nearly soaked through from the condensation, all but one little corner pretty much stuck to the table. “What’s that?”  
  
“Are you into guys?”  
  
It’s basically what he was expecting to hear, but it still makes his heart sink a little bit. It’s weird. All spongy and squishy somehow.  
  
“Do I seem like I might be?”  
  
Dom hesitates a little bit.  
  
“Kinda.”  
  
It’s a clenching feeling, and Jin’s not sure if it’s in his stomach or his chest, but it’s sort of scary. He feels  _embarrassed_. Like somebody’s just told him he’s been walking around with no pants on for the last twenty years, and it was obvious to everybody but him—that kind of scary. Because Dom is  _gay_ , and isn’t there supposed to be some kind of secret gay spidey-sense that comes along with—  
  
“Jin—chill, okay?” Dom says, putting a hand on his arm to shake him out of his panic, and that’s when Jin realizes it must be written all over his face. “I’m not saying you’re, like, faggy or effeminate, or whatever—though, okay, you’re the only straight guy I know who plucks his eyebrows, but—that’s not what you asked. I’m saying as a friend or whatever, as a guy sitting here watching you get all quiet when Josh is being a douche and you usually love that, and listening to you ask me about straight guys fucking dudes…you kind of seem like you might be going through something here.”  
  
Jin stares at him for a while. Those are a lot of words to make sense of when his head is feeling like it’s feeling.  
  
“So…you don’t think I’m gay,” he says, just to confirm—because he’s pretty sure that was in there somewhere, but he just wants to check.  
  
Dom shakes his head—with a trying-really-hard-not-to-laugh-at-him expression on his face, but Jin is willing to overlook that. It’s a relief.  
  
Not that gay is bad, but gay is  _complicated_ , and it just doesn’t…sound like him. It sounds like someone else.  
  
It’s just a relief.  
  
“Then what am I?”  
  
Dom tilts his head to the side, giving a little half-shrug. He plucks the toothpick out of his drink and bites the last little mandarin orange slice off the end of it. “Something else, I guess.”  
  
*      *      *  
  
It’s a stretch. It’s always a stretch, but the alcohol helps, and the rush helps too, heart hammering against his ribcage. This guy is big, a solid wall of heat against Jin’s back, likes Jin’s nipples, loves Jin’s ass.  _Fuck me_ , Jin thinks, and maybe he says it too, because the guy bites his earlobe and tells him what a hot fuck he is and how much he’s going to love it, and then he’s thrusting into him and Jin doesn’t give a fuck about anything anymore. He whimpers when a tight hand closes around him and starts jerking him too.  
  
“Like that, huh…”  
  
_Yeah. Fuck yeah…_  
  
And Jin arches back against a firm chest, clenches fingers in gel-streaked hair and gets fucked, because he likes it. He doesn’t wonder what they’ll say to each other afterwards. He doesn’t worry that he’s doing something wrong, because everything is good. Everything is the rush, and the stretch. He’s balanced on the knife’s edge with someone’s hand around his cock and the hard thrusts inside him are almost too much, and he doesn’t worry about what anyone outside this room might think, because the only people who would care are far away from here right now, and fuck them anyway.  
  
The guy groans and holds him tighter when Jin comes, and there’s breath against his cheek, hands touching and everything good. Everything hot and hard and safe, and Jin doesn’t have to think about anything at all.  
  
The guy really loves his ass. The groan is even hotter on the last thrust, desperate and satisfied and so fucking strong, and as they both sink messy into the sheets, Jin feels stretched and worn out and alive.  
  
*      *      *  
  
It’s bright and sunny and cold, but not too cold when he stays out of the shadows. He’s just spent three hours with his English tutor, a sunny blonde who studies linguistics at UCLA and apparently minors in sadism. His brain is feeling completely wrung out, so in a way the chill is actually a good thing. Like a little splash of water to the face.  
  
He’s got a few hours to himself now—there’s a going away party tonight for Josh’s ex-girlfriend, who’s moving to Thailand for a year, but Josh still hasn’t told him where it’s supposed to be, so who knows what’s happening with that. He was supposed to text Jin last night, but he must have forgotten. Jin left three messages for him this morning, but he hasn’t gotten a single reply. Anyway, whatever—he’s hungry. Maybe he’ll stop at one of the places up on Wilshire and grab a sandwich before he heads back to his apartment.  
  
His phone starts buzzing against his hip just as he’s approaching the corner, and Jin snorts to himself as he fishes it out. He bets himself a Blizzard for dessert that the idiot is only calling now to say he has no idea where the party is.  
  
“Didn’t your mother ever teach you to answer your phone messages, fuckwit?” Jin answers, glancing across the street to see if it looks like he’ll make the light. The walk sign is already flashing orange to the left—he’ll probably have to cross Wilshire first and then cross over. Or—actually, there’s that deli two blocks down on the right…  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
Jin stops walking.  
  
Holy shit. Fuck—thank god he said that in English, unless…shit. Does he? Who knows, it’s been—god, is it really…  
  
“Sorry,” Jin says, switching to Japanese. “Shit—sorry, I thought—I thought it was someone else.”  
  
Jin thinks he hears an awkward little huff of breath from the other end of the phone. He needs to hear him speak again. Needs it to really be him.  
  
“No, it’s—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called so suddenly. Is this a bad time?”  
  
“No,” Jin says quickly. Then he realizes he’s kind of standing in the middle of the sidewalk, and the traffic is so noisy he has to plug his ear just to make out Kame’s voice. When the walk light turns on, people start pushing past him to get into the crosswalk and he has to swim upstream a bit to get out of the flow. He ducks into a shallow alcove in the wall of the nearest building—the shadows make it cold, but at least he’s a little more protected from the wind. “No, this is totally fine. What’s up? How are you?”  
  
As he says it, it suddenly occurs to him with a little stab of panic that maybe it’s not just a polite question—because god, Kame hasn’t called him up out of the blue for  _anything_  in like a year, what if something… “Is everything okay?”  
  
“Everything’s fine,” Kame reassures him quickly. “I’m fine. How are you?”  
  
“I’m good,” Jin says, nodding a little. Kame doesn’t sound like he’s lying, but he does still sound a little weird. Not that Jin is really sure he knows what normal sounds like from Kame anymore, but based on his memory he just sounds sort of…careful. The longer the little silences drag on, the more Jin wonders why he’s calling.  
  
“I’m sorry I haven’t called before now,” Kame says. “It’s just…things have been really busy. The time sort of got away from me. You know.”  
  
“Yeah,” Jin says. “Yeah, I know.”  
  
But he doesn’t, really. Jin doesn’t know anything anymore.  
  
“I’m glad you called now though.”  
  
It gets quiet again, for a bit. Jin was never good at this game, but now he’s really out of practice. He doesn’t have any idea what to do with Kame’s silences anymore.  
  
“You are?”  
  
There’s something a little tentative in there, a little insecure, and Jin nods vigorously, as if that will somehow drive his point home in a way that a hundred unanswered phone messages hasn’t. “Yes,” he says. No arguing, no sarcasm, no  _of course I’m fucking glad, I was the one who called you_ —just tell him what he needs to hear. “I’m really glad. I really wanted to talk to you.”  
  
There’s a little breath on the other end of the line, nearly swallowed up by the honking horns at the intersection beside him, but Jin is listening so hard it doesn’t matter.  
  
“I’m glad,” Kame says. “I thought you’d be sort of pissed at me.”  
  
Yeah. He probably should be, really—maybe he would be if they were having this conversation a year ago instead of now. He’s not even sure exactly why he’s not. But then there are other things too, and maybe it’s only fair, and Jin…Jin is just so fucking happy to hear from him. He doesn’t want to be angry.  
  
“I’m not pissed at you,” Jin says. “I really miss you.”  
  
He hasn’t really thought about the best way to say that, and maybe it came out too bluntly. He worries for a moment, maybe that was a step too far—he still doesn’t know why Kame’s calling, after all, and he has no idea where the boundaries are anymore.  
  
It’s gone quiet again.  
  
“Are you pissed at me?” he asks.  
  
“No,” Kame says, and Jin thinks he can hear a hint of a smile. “I miss you too.”  
  
And that makes everything so much better.  
  
*      *      *

 _Spring_  
  
“So now I dump the flour and stuff in there?” Jin asks, reaching for the larger bowl next to him on the kitchen table. It’s heavier than he expects, and he just about drops the phone into the bowl full of eggs and sugar sitting directly in front of him—has to jerk his head to the side quickly to make sure it doesn’t slip off his shoulder.  
  
“Don’t dump it,” Kame says quickly. “You have to sift it.”  
  
Jin lets the bowl rest on the table again and puts a hand to the phone so he can give his neck a break. “How do I do that?”  
  
“With a sifter.”  
  
Jin blinks a couple of times. “Is that like a blender?”  
  
There’s a heavy sigh from the other end of the phone—and Jin isn’t sure why, but it makes him smile.  
  
It’s 2 a.m. on a Tuesday where he is, and Jin has a class in the morning—but this is when Kame is free, and Jin doesn’t mind staying up a little late. It’s not every day, but at least once or twice a week. Mostly Kame calls him, because he’s busy with stuff and Jin’s schedule is flexible, but Kame always texts him first to check that it’s okay because of the time difference.  
  
Jin still hasn't gotten up the nerve to ask why they’re talking again all of a sudden. He’s a little afraid that if he asks, it will stop.  
  
Kame sends him on a hunt through every implement in his rented kitchen, and Jin describes possible candidates one by one until he finds a sort of mesh pasta strainer that Kame seems to think will be sufficient.  
  
“You have to pour the mixture into the sifter a little at a time and then sort of shake it so it all falls through.”  
  
Jin stops in mid shake. “Till it all—what the hell is the point of the sifter thingy if it all falls through?”  
  
“I don’t know, it’s just what you do.”  
  
“Do you mean to tell me that you go through all this hassle instead of just dumping the stuff in the same bowl and mixing it together _every time_  you make cookies, and you don’t even know why?”  
  
Kame gives another irritated sigh. “Will you just sift the damn dry mix, Akanishi?”  
  
Jin blinks. Stops.  
  
Kame seems to hear it too.  
  
“Sorry,” Kame hedges, sounding uncertain again, like he wishes he could take it back. “I didn’t mean it like—I—that just sort of…”  
  
“I’m  _sifting_  already,” Jin interrupts him, with an exaggerated grumble. He doesn’t actually start shaking the strainer again though. He’s too busy listening—hoping Kame will take the bait.  
  
There’s a nervous little laugh from the other end of the line.  
  
“Yeah, um…do that. Please,” Kame says.  
  
The cookies are for his English tutor. Well, ostensibly they’re for his English tutor. He’s making an entire batch of these things, which—as far as Jin can tell from the mixture that is gradually getting larger and more difficult to stir—is likely to be about three hundred of them, so he’ll probably keep a few for himself too. And he has to taste-test them anyway, just to make sure they’re not, like, poisoned or anything.  
  
Anyway, she let slip last week that it’s her birthday this Saturday, and she always has a sweet with her coffee when they meet at Starbucks for their sessions, and Jin thought maybe a nice present would make her less likely to flip out at him next time he fucks up his past perfect progressive tense. Jin has never made cookies himself before, and when he told Kame he was planning to just buy a plate of them at the Super King on the corner, Kame decided that was unacceptable. Which is how Jin ended up sifting flour and baking soda through a pasta strainer in his kitchen at 2 a.m. with Kame instructing him from six thousand miles away.  
  
“Use the oven mitts,” Kame fusses when Jin swears and nearly drops the pan of neatly dolloped cookie dough on the floor.  
  
“The pan isn’t even hot yet,” Jin points out, balancing it against the side of the counter and sucking on the tip of his finger.  
  
“But the  _oven_  is…”  
  
Sometimes he wonders during these conversations, like when he’s running his burnt finger under cold water and Kame is rambling on about kitchen safety, or when he glances at the clock and realizes he was supposed to meet Josh and Dom three hours ago and he forgot to let them know he’d be late, or when he finds himself actually folding laundry and putting it away rather than just leaving it piled in the hamper until he’s used it all again because he has the time and he might as well be doing something with his hands while they’re talking…he wonders if he wouldn’t rather be doing something else. They used to have long conversations about nothing all the time, curled up in Jin’s bed after a night out or just hanging out on the couch playing video games or eating their way through a giant bag of popcorn. It never felt unusual or special or anything then—it was just what happened, just the way they were, and in hindsight Jin probably took it for granted.  
  
Even now there’s a part of him that feels like he should be annoyed at having to stay in most nights so he won’t be someplace noisy when Kame is free, or like he should at least have a hankering for crowds and drinks and friends and all that good stuff. He loves that stuff.  
  
But then Kame calls, and they spend an hour talking about surfing and whether or not having a paper cut on your foot would get you eaten by a shark, and somehow he doesn’t care anymore.  
  
“Why would you even have a paper cut on your foot anyway?” Kame says. “Are you opening mail with your toes these days?”  
  
“It’s a theoretical question.”  
  
“It’s an unrealistic theoretical question.”  
  
“Okay, fine,” Jin says. “Let’s say you dropped a stack of papers on your foot, and one of them cut you.”  
  
“Because you were walking around the office in your bare feet?”  
  
“People have papers at home too, Kamenashi.”  
  
“This is still a very unlikely scenario.”  
  
“Right, that does it. Next time I see you, I’m going to drop a stack of papers on your feet and throw you into shark infested waters, and we’ll just  _see_  how long it takes for them to eat you.”  
  
Kame laughs.  
  
*      *      *  
  
“You sound kind of…better now,” Jin says, half to himself as he stares up at constellations in the random bumps on the ceiling.  
  
Kame laughs a little. “Better how?”  
  
“You sound like you’re, you know…feeling better.”  
  
It gets a bit quiet. Suddenly Jin wonders if he shouldn’t have said anything. If he’d thought about it beforehand he wouldn’t have, it’s just…he was thinking it, and it kind of slipped out.  
  
“Oh,” Kame says, sounding sort of taken aback.   
  
“Sorry,” Jin says, wishing he could bring back the easy mood. Stupid. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. I know you don’t want to—”  
  
“No, it’s okay,” Kame says—though he sounds a bit more like he’s telling himself that than telling Jin. “Yeah, I guess…I guess I am a bit better now. For a while there things were really…yeah.”  
  
“I’m sorry if I, you know…made it worse or anything.”  
  
“No, Jin—no. You didn’t, honestly, I was just…” He takes kind of a deep breath and lets it out on a long sigh. Jin waits—gives him time to get his thoughts together. When his voice comes back, he sounds a little less uncertain.  
  
“It took me a while to figure out some stuff,” Kame says. “You were right. I did need help.”  
  
Jin swallows. That fight. Kame’s actually talking about it. Jin wishes he could see his face, but at least he can hear his voice, and at least they’re talking about it. And Kame isn’t running anywhere.   
  
“I’m—I’m sorry I couldn’t…”  
  
But he doesn’t know how to finish it. There are too many ways to finish it, too many things he couldn’t do, and he’s not sure anymore which of them matter and which of them don’t. He’s tried not to think about it too much for such a long time, and now that he’s thinking of it that same messy ball of feelings comes back, fully-formed and perfectly preserved. Exactly the way he left it.  
  
“It wasn’t your fault,” Kame says. “It was my fault. There wasn’t anything else you could have done, I just…needed space, I guess.”  
  
Yeah, Jin thinks as he glances out the window at the wide, darkened street. He can sympathize with that.  
  
“Thank you for not…you know,” Kame mumbles, his voice so low Jin can only understand what he’s saying because he spent so much time listening once. “For still trying. It was more than I deserved, and I’m really sorry if I hurt you.”  
  
Jin doesn’t really know what to say to that either. He can’t say Kame didn’t hurt him, because that would be a lie—but it’s also kind of water under the bridge, and it won’t make anything any better to make Kame feel guilty over stuff they can’t change. He’s just glad they’re talking now.  
  
Anyway. There are a lot of things they can’t change.  
  
“I’m sorry if I hurt you too.”  
  
*      *      *  
  
“Say something in English to me,” Kame murmurs in his ear.  
  
“What do you want me to say?” Jin asks, mouth twitching with a smile. His eyes are closed and he’s curled up on his side on the bedspread, his cheek warm where his phone is trapped between his head and the pillow.  
  
“I don’t know. Something interesting.”  
  
Jin rolls onto his back again and casts about a bit, staring up at the ceiling. He speaks English all the time, but after three hours on the phone with Kame, coming up with a string of words out of thin air is surprisingly difficult.  
  
“ _I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!_ ”  
  
Kame’s laughter is just a little bit deeper than it was a few years ago, but it still gives Jin the same old buzz every time he hears it open up like that. He can practically see him rolling on the couch and snickering into the cushions.  
  
“Okay,” Kame says, still chuckling a bit, “I think even I understood some of that one.”  
  
Jin smiles and reaches for the container of cookies sitting next to him. “It was either that or Die Hard.”  
  
“What are your classes like?”  
  
“Pretty cool,” he says, breaking off another little piece of cookie to munch on. “Different than high school.”  
  
“Different how?”  
  
“I don’t know—I guess it’s more collaborative, or something?” Jin mulls it over, staring up at the fragment of cookie in his hand. “It’s like, everybody’s there because they really want to be there. Nobody’s dragging their heels. And the atmosphere is really chill too—you don’t have to worry about saying something stupid.”  
  
It gets quiet for a little while, but Jin is used to that by now. The quiet is usually just thinking, nothing scary.  
  
“That sounds really nice for you,” Kame says.  
  
It’s not begrudging—but it is a little bit sad. Jin can’t pretend he doesn’t hear that.  
  
He hasn’t asked all that much about how things are going for Kame back home. Not in detail, anyway—just general questions, and Kame gives general answers, and they both mostly steer clear of things that might get complicated. Nothing dangerous. Stick to sharks.  
  
But Jin can’t pretend he doesn’t have some idea of the complicated things either.  
  
“How are things for you?” Jin says, with a little flutter of anxiety, but he tamps that down. Pushes it away. “With work, I mean.”  
  
Kame is quiet again for a bit. Thinking.  
  
“It’s okay,” he says, a little bit carefully. “We’ve actually got a tour coming up soon. And we…they’ve given us a TV show.”  
  
The little squeeze in Jin’s chest takes him almost completely by surprise.  
  
He knows he’s missed Kame, that’s obvious—but that started long before he left. And this was the  _reason_  he left—to get away from exactly this. This kind of stuff. The heavy schedule, the constant need to be switched on, the pressure. It was overwhelming sometimes, and he really ought to remember that.  
  
But. Maybe it would have been different if he hadn’t been alone.  
  
The truth is, he’s thought about it before now. Off and on, sometimes during a lull in conversation at the club, or when he’s staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, or when he’s lying on the carpet surrounded by mismatched socks listening to Kame talk about the sweet little old lady who runs the flower shop around the corner from his apartment…he’s thought about it. All the parts that weren’t bad or overwhelming—the parts that were great. The parts that made him feel amazing and like he’d maybe sort of actually made his dreams come true. Which is scary too in its own way, but that just means he has to dream bigger next time, and Jin can do that.  
  
And the thing is, he could probably just stay here if he wants to. Nobody’s tugging on the leash. His leave of absence will run out eventually, but there’s nothing preventing him from staying if that’s what he decides when it ends. And there’s nothing promising him a place to return to if he decides not to stay.  
  
They’re moving forward too.  
  
The longer he stays away, the harder it will be to catch up.  
  
“Kame?” Jin says after a while.  
  
“Hm,” Kame murmurs back, and if he closes his eyes it’s almost like back then. Like Kame is right there in the room with him, letting Jin use his shoulder as a pillow and mumbling comfortable conversation in the dark.  
  
“I was thinking I might…come home.”  
  
It’s silent for a while. Jin doesn’t even hear Kame breathing over there.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Back to Japan,” Jin clarifies, because he can’t tell if Kame sounds uncertain or just confused. “I mean, back to…you know, everything.” There’s a little flutter of nerves building inside, because he hasn’t really thought through what he’ll do if Kame says no to him right now. But now isn’t the time to start worrying about that. “I haven’t talked it over with anyone yet, but I’ve been thinking about it, and…I wanted to talk to you first. You know, to see what you think.”  
  
He waits for an answer. The flutter melts into a sick little pool of disappointment when he doesn’t get one.  
  
“Bad idea?” he says, trying not to let it show in his voice.  
  
“No,” Kame says quickly, and there’s something strange in his voice too, but Jin can’t put his finger on what it is. “No. I think that’s a great idea.”  
  
Jin can’t quite hold in the little huff of relief. “Seriously? You think—will the other guys be okay with it, do you think?”  
  
“Sure,” he says. “Yes, totally, I’m sure the other…the other guys will be fine with it. We’ll definitely work something out.”  
  
“Good,” Jin says, smiling a little into the phone. “Well, I think maybe I’ll…do that then.”  
  
“Good,” Kame echoes, and Jin feels certain he can hear a smile there too. “I think that’s really, really…good.”  
  
*      *      *  
  
The guy’s shoulder feels strong under Jin’s cheek, smells of sweat and vodka, remnants of cologne. His body is still humming, still stretched and sated, and there’s a plane ticket sitting on the nightstand back in his apartment. There will be a car waiting for him at the airport, and after that it’s out of his hands again, into theirs.  
  
But for now he’s just here, eyes closed and breathing in the heat, the fingertips running lightly through his hair. For a little while, it almost feels like home.  
  
*      *      *


	3. 2007

_Spring_  
  
The seats are soft and the car has really nice suspension so the ride is smooth, but Jin’s insides are jumping up and down all by themselves as they get closer to the studio.  
  
At least they let him sleep off the flight for like twelve hours, but he’s already been to the hairdresser and a costume fitting this morning and it’s not even 9:30 yet. There’s more stuff on his schedule for the next week than he’s done in total in the last six months, and the woman in the passenger’s seat is rattling off reminders about some magazine thing tomorrow morning that’s been added at the last minute. The others all had their shoots for it last month, but they’re trying to squeeze him in before the issue goes to print next week. They probably just want to ask him all the same questions everybody’s been asking, even people at the jimusho.  
  
That’s not why he’s nervous though.  
  
They pull up to the front entrance, and there’s some guy in a suit opening the door for him before he can even reach for the handle. “We’re running a little behind schedule, Akanishi-san,” the man says as he ushers Jin through the lobby and down a hallway. “The press are still setting up, but I can show you to the greenroom and we’ll let you know as soon as we’re ready.”  
  
“Um, yeah.” Jin clears his throat when his voice sticks—he hasn’t used it much today, and his brain is still a little bit on California time. “Cool, thanks. Sounds good.”  
  
There’s another turn onto a slightly longer hallway, and Jin can’t remember if he’s been in this part of the building before—they all look the same after a while—but then the man turns abruptly toward a door halfway down and opens it for him, and Jin is really not prepared.  
  
Taguchi is the first one he sees, looks up from the game console on his lap and smiles brightly at him. “Hey, you’re back!”  
  
The door shuts quietly behind him, and Jin tries not to feel caged in. It’s just the nerves. It’ll pass. He can do this.  
  
He tries a smile.  
  
“Of course he’s back,” Koki says, throwing a pretzel at Taguchi from the other couch. “What do you think we’re doing here?”  
  
“How was the flight?” Nakamaru asks. He’s sitting on the other end of the couch from Taguchi, flipping through an outdated copy of TV Navi.  
  
“Not too bad,” Jin says, glancing around the rest of the room. It’s not very big, and apart from Ueda messing with his bangs in the mirror and waving at him over his shoulder there isn’t much more to see. “Kind of long.”  
  
“Mm,” Nakamaru nods in sympathy.  
  
Jin sticks his hands in his pockets to keep them from fidgeting.  
  
“Where’s Kame?” he asks, in his best offhand voice, glancing around again like he’s only just realized who’s missing.  
  
“He had a meeting or something upstairs,” Koki says, munching on another pretzel. “Guess he’ll be down soon.”  
  
“Oh. Good. That’s cool.” Jin nods and leans back against the wall.  
  
He bounces a little bit, staring at the wall opposite. His hands still seem to want to fidget even though he’s got them tucked away.  
  
After a while, the silence starts to get a little awkward. Jin starts casting about for something to say, but all he can really think of is “I heard your last single,” and that doesn’t seem like it’s likely to make anything less awkward.  
  
Eventually he steals a handful of pretzels from the bowl in front of Koki and sits down on the free end of the sofa. In his head, Watsuki-san is saying something admonishing about carbs and sodium, but Jin just crunches the pretzels between his teeth to drown her out. It’s too early for that shit.  
  
None of the magazines are very interesting, but he finally finds one with a section full of movie reviews and tries to engross himself in that. Every few minutes he has to stop his leg from jiggling because it’s making the page too hard to read.  
  
Then the door opens.  
  
The first thing Jin notices is how real he looks—sort of flushed and frazzled, but not starving or sick, and not dead-eyed. Not even polished—he’s got a garment bag over his arm, but he’s still in a check shirt and tank top at the moment. And maybe Jin is just imagining stuff because of how long it’s been since he actually saw him, but he even seems like he fills it out better than he used to. Maybe. A little.  
  
Kame drops the garment bag on the chair by the makeup table and starts undoing his buttons before he even looks up. When he meets Jin’s eyes in the mirror, he falters.  
  
Jin holds his breath. Kame doesn’t look away.  
  
Then a smile spreads across Kame’s face.  
  
“Hey, you’re here,” he says, turning around, his shirt kind of rumpled at the front where he’s only halfway through the buttons.  
  
Jin nods and tries not to sound nervous. “Mostly, yeah.”  
  
“They’ve got you running around in circles already, huh,” Kame says with another little smile, and his eyes flick over Jin like he’s taking him in too. For a moment Jin wonders if Kame would walk right up and hug him if they were alone, but then he stops, because that was a weird thought. “When did you get in?”  
  
“Yesterday afternoon.”  
  
“Ouch,” Kame winces. “Well…welcome home?”  
  
They both smile at that, and Jin has to look down at the magazine again because it’s just so fucking good to see Kame smile and mean it.  
  
Then Kame remembers his half-done shirt and starts unbuttoning again. “Sorry, I have to—there was a bunch of stuff this morning, and I haven’t had a chance to change yet.” He tugs the flannel shirt off his shoulders and drops it on the makeup table, unzipping the garment bag and pulling out a red blazer and another button-down with a vest. Jin looks at the blazer and then at Kame’s back as he hangs it up and starts fiddling with it and…doesn’t ask. Just sort of smiles down at his magazine again.  
  
Kame is still plucking at his hair in the mirror when the guy in the suit comes back again to tell them it’s time. The other four file out right away, but Jin hangs back a little to wait for Kame to finish primping. The door falls closed behind Nakamaru, and Kame turns around again, tugging at his shirtsleeves and straightening them under the jacket.  
  
“I’m really glad you’re back,” he says. He’s still focused on the sleeves, doesn’t seem to quite be able to look at Jin when he says it—but it’s not the same as before. It feels like the truth.  
  
Jin slips his hands into his back pockets and glances down at the floor as well. “Me too,” he says.  
  
 _I’m glad you’re back too_.  
  
*      *      *  
  
There are way too many lights, and they’re all pointed at him.  
  
He feels himself start to sweat immediately, and then he wishes he hadn’t noticed because it just makes him more nervous and self-conscious and that makes him sweat even more. How did he forget how bright it was up here? How loud, cameras snapping and pens scratching and a general murmur throughout the conference room from people he can’t even see because the lights are so bright. His name is coming from everywhere, slithering around in the shadows. It makes him want to turn around and walk right back out again.  
  
Something brushes his arm, a little too deliberately to be accidental, and Jin glances over. Kame’s not looking at him—he’s smiling for the gathered reporters, speaking confidently into the microphone and drawing their attention. The others are all in muted shades, Jin too, but Kame’s red blazer sticks out without seeming to mean to, and he deals with them so easily, and Jin wonders when the hell he figured this shit out. He knows exactly what to say to them. He knows exactly what they want to hear. It doesn’t even seem like a shield anymore, just confidence.  
  
Is this what he’s been doing all the time Jin’s been away?  
  
A long time ago, he used to look to Jin to figure out what was supposed to happen next. Jin isn’t sure when things turned the other way around.  
  
By the time it’s his turn, Jin feels a little bit calmer. It’s still too bright and too hot up here, but he doesn’t feel quite so exposed. And he’s not alone.  
  
He answers their questions, tells them about the English and new experiences and being ready to get back to work. Promises to work hard to catch up. He’s still sweating too much, and he wants to get this over with and stop answering questions, but he takes them one at a time and does his best. If he’s doing this, he’s going to do it right. And maybe it will get easier.  
  
When he’s done, Kame smiles at him. And even though there’s a room full of people standing in front of them hanging on their every move, somehow Jin feels like it’s just for him.  
  
It’s easier already.  
  
*      *      *  
  
“Where’s my fluff thing?” Jin asks the room at large, shaking his hair away from his eyes. He had it just a minute ago, where did he put it?  
  
Koki glances up, frowning. “Your what?”  
  
“My fluff thing. You know, the piece that goes like…” He tries to motion the shape of it on his shoulder, but Koki just looks more confused.  
  
“Never mind,” he sighs, walking over to his corner to dig through his stuff again.  
  
Nakamaru pokes his head in through the doorway. “Call in three minutes, guys.” Jin waves him off with a mumble, still hunting for his—ah! That’s it. Fell behind the chair. Of course. They always fall behind the chair.  
  
Koki is already out the door, and Jin follows him, tugging at his collar and flicking an annoying piece of hair out of his face. It’s not that he’s nervous, exactly, he’s hardly new at this, and it’s like the fourth time since he’s been back, so he’s really getting into the swing of things again. It’s just jitters. Just normal.  
  
Ueda and Nakamaru are already gathered in their meeting spot under the stage, along with about half of the juniors, a few more trickling in from the other end of the hallway. Jin glances around as he comes up between Koki and Nakamaru.  
  
“Where’s Kame?” It’s weird that he’s not here yet—he’s usually the first one.  
  
“He was here a minute ago,” Ueda says, distracted by a bit of fabric at the front of his costume that won’t quite lay right. Jin thinks it can hardly make a difference, but then he catches himself plucking fussily at his own sleeve, and…okay, fair enough. “He went to talk to what’s-his-face, he’ll be back soon.”  
  
They can hear the crowd from down here—a sea of excited chatter that ebbs and flows, muffled only a little by the stage. The jitter is turning into excitement now.  
  
Something claps him on the back of the shoulder, and then Kame is there, looking sort of obnoxiously amped up and determined to take everybody with him whether they like it or not—and maybe Jin is crazy too, because he knows it’ll work.  
  
A couple of guys from the band trail in as well—one of them gives them a little smile and nod as they pass, heading off to set up their instruments. Kame smiles back.  
  
“Right,” Kame says, confident and sparkly like he only ever is before a performance, “we’re ready for this, right? We’re going to be amazing.”  
  
There’s a ripple running through the juniors too, as it gets closer to the time, and everybody knows how this works. They just sort of find their places, circle up. Kame takes Nakamaru’s hand on one side and Jin’s on the other, and his palm is damp and a little clammy. Jin gives it a squeeze.  
  
Kame squeezes back.  
  
*      *      *  
  
“That one was mine!” Kame rages when Bowser knocks Yoshi out of the way and zooms through the item block. He really is very invested in this for someone who thought they were “too old for Mario Kart” an hour ago.  
  
“Get your own, shorty.”  
  
Kame elbows him in the ribs, and Jin laughs, trying to shove him back with his shoulder and keep his go-kart on the track at the same time. He’s just in the midst of navigating a narrow bridge when a red shell comes out of nowhere and blows Bowser into the water.  
  
Jin glares, but Kame only smirks as he whistles past the finish line.  
  
As the victory sequence plays and Yoshi bounces on top of the podium, Jin tosses his controller onto the coffee table and reaches for the beer. “Want another one?”  
  
“Mm,” Kame nods, dropping a small handful of nuts into his mouth. He takes the beer Jin opens for him and drops back against the back of the couch, tilting his chin up to take a long sip. Jin glances over at him in passing before taking a sip of his own, also sinking back into the couch. The cushions give underneath their combined weight, and they gradually sink closer together, shoulders touching.  
  
“We’re too old for this game,” Jin says.  
  
Kame laughs. “I could swear I’ve heard that somewhere before…”  
  
Jin grins at him. It’s nice like this, the two of them in the same room, and nobody else around. Nothing to make it about work. Not even an ocean between them, and it’s easier than he ever expected it to be when he first came back. And also a little bit scary, because he still doesn’t really understand…why.  
  
He’s glad though. He’s really, really glad.  
  
Kame leans into him a little bit more and props one foot up on the edge of the coffee table, taking another sip of beer.  
  
“I took back the stereo, you know.”  
  
Jin nods vaguely, watching Kame’s eyes blink up at the ceiling. They look a little bit sleepy, maybe. “They accepted it?”  
  
Kame shakes his head. “They didn’t want to, but I pushed them on it—they wanted to send me off with store credit for half the value, or something ridiculous like that. I mean, the thing  _did not work_ …”  
  
It’s so comfortable like this. It seems like ages since Jin’s seen Kame just normal, not made up like…whatever. You can see all the freckles on his face, and he’s even got his pants unbuttoned because they ate too much takeout. That is not something the Kame from before would have done around him. He’s completely sure of that. The Kame from before wouldn’t be here in the first place.  
  
His arm feels nice against Jin’s. His shoulder is still a little pointy, but not quite like it used to be.  
  
“I hate those vertical disc-changer models—they always break,” Jin agrees, taking another sip of his beer.  
  
He’s getting sleepy now too, and it sort of makes him want to curl himself around Kame and close his eyes—old habits. And the funny thing is, it almost even feels like that would be fine, like it used to be. They’ve had all these awkward barriers between them for so long, and the feeling that those might actually be gone now is just…yeah. Relief doesn’t even cover it.  
  
But then again, maybe that wasn’t fine after all. That was what started all this shit in the first place, he can’t let himself forget that. Just because it’s working now doesn’t mean it’ll keep working if he gets stupid and lets his guard down and starts getting all clingy like he used to. If he goes down that road again, Kame might end up—  
  
The thought sticks. Hovers, just at the edge of his mind, not quite had yet.  
  
But there anyway.  
  
He looks at Kame again. Kame hasn’t noticed, Kame is still gesturing with his beer and talking to the ceiling about warranties and return policies. Kame’s eyes are flickering with details, exasperation and dry amusement, and his hair falls limply back from his forehead, his eyebrows all sharp in relief—he’s always had a strange face, slightly reptilian if you look at it from the wrong angle. But Jin knows all his angles, knows his smile and his blank not-caring, and that little pout of irritation around his mouth when he gets to the bit about them charging him separately for the remote he couldn’t find, and…his mouth. Jin catches himself staring at it and looks away. Takes a sip of his beer and can’t taste it, just washes it down.  
  
Because maybe Jin wants that.  
  
It’s under his skin, inside his head—all the things he knows now, the things he hasn’t told anyone. And he hasn’t even been tempted, really, because they weren’t about anyone else, they were only about him. Only about things he needed, things he wanted to know for himself. About himself.  
  
And maybe, a little bit…  
  
Oh god.  
  
He takes another deep drink of his beer and agrees with something again, and he hopes Kame hasn’t noticed that he’s started sweating. Out of the corner of his eye, he sneaks another glance at Kame sprawled out beside him, the way his sloppy t-shirt falls over his less-skinny-than-before frame and his jeans fit through the hips, and he gets this really vivid image of what it would be like, and this wave of want just sort of crashes over him and freaks him the fuck out.  
  
This is different. Oh, god, this would be different. With the others it was all…they were  _strangers_ , and he didn’t care—they were just different, and they disappeared. It was nothing. It didn’t  _mean_  anything, but Kame… With Kame…  
  
He’s not ready for this.  
  
“You’re falling asleep on me,” Kame murmurs.  
  
Jin starts a little, hopes Kame doesn’t notice, but Kame just smiles sort of knowingly, like Jin has proved his point. His face is really close. Jin gets lost again looking at him, can’t remember what the question was, and maybe that last beer was a bad idea.  
  
Kame’s eyes seem to go warmer and deeper the longer Jin looks at him. Or maybe that’s just the beer.  
  
“Huh?”  
  
And then it’s a laugh, and Kame looks away, fiddling with his beer bottle to check that it’s empty. His hand brushes Jin’s knee as he sits up, which sort of makes Jin jump again—but Kame doesn’t notice this time, already busy cleaning up the mess of snacks on the coffee table.  
  
“You’re leaving?” Jin asks, following him into the kitchen with a bowl and an empty senbei package.  
  
“Yeah, it’s getting late.” Kame rinses the crumbs off of a plate under the faucet and puts it in the dishwasher. Jin just leaves the bowl in the sink.  
  
“You don’t have to go—you can crash here if you want.”  
  
Shit. No.  
  
Not ready, mouth,  _not ready_.  
  
Kame glances at him briefly as he wipes his hands on the dishtowel. There’s a little twist of his mouth as he turns away, heading back out toward the front door. “Thanks—but no, I’ve got to meet someone tomorrow and I’ll need different clothes.”  
  
“Those clothes look good on you.”  
  
Kame gives him a curious look over his shoulder, and, well…okay, he has a point. They’re kind of worn-out jeans, not even in the vintage sense, and the t-shirt is a bit sloppy and has a hole in it up near the collar. But Jin still thinks they look good.  
  
“Thanks?” he says, reaching down to straighten out the heel of his sneaker. “But, yeah, no, I need to get home.”  
  
When he looks up at Jin again it’s like he gets caught on something. Something he sees, or something he’s thinking, or just…something. He gets this look on his face that’s all sort of soft and thoughtful at the same time, and for a moment it seems to linger somewhere around Jin’s mouth. It puts a little curl in Jin’s stomach, makes him feel sort of lightheaded, and he’s not quite sure if that’s attraction or fear.  
  
 _Stay_ , Jin thinks. Though at least this time he stops himself from saying it.  
  
Oh god—this is going to take some getting used to.  
  
Then Kame clears his throat and blinks away again, swiping his bangs back from his face. “This was fun though,” he says, with a faltering smile. It doesn’t come out quite as easy as before, but Jin doesn’t know if that’s Kame or him. “Invite me again sometime?”  
  
Jin nods quickly. “Of course. Absolutely. Any time.”  
  
The smile smoothes out a bit more, and Kame glances down at the pile of shoes near his feet. The smile somehow makes him look ten years younger, and also really…not.  
  
Oh, god.  
  
When Kame is finally gone, Jin just kind of sits down on the arm of the couch with his forgotten beer bottle in his hand and a confusing churn in his stomach.  
  
*      *      *  
  
It’s not hard. It’s really not that hard, he knew all the steps two weeks ago. Didn’t always get them in the right order under the heat and the lights, but whatever, this crowd is used to that. If he just fills in any gap with a hip roll they’re totally satisfied, only now he can’t even do that right. Because Kame is always there.  
  
He’s tried to make it go away. All the rest of it went away, pretty much—he hasn’t really even thought about fucking a guy since he got home. Not…any other guy. He hasn’t really thought about fucking a girl either, fair enough—it’s been really busy these past few weeks, and most nights sleep and drinks with friends have sounded better, but…then there’s Kame.  
  
Kame makes him think. Kame sounds good.  
  
Jin stuffs that down again—deal with it after the concert—and pushes his sweaty bangs up off his face as he marks out the break again in front of the dressing room mirror.  
  
He’s halfway through when Kame swings in, peeling his shirts off and tossing them over the chair to grab the next costume piece. Jin doesn’t even realize he’s staring—at the sweat on his back, at the way his shoulder blades move as he reaches up for something shiny—until Kame notices him in the mirror and stares back. His brows twitch, sort of…confused, a little stutter. But then it smoothes out again, and Jin isn’t sure he saw anything at all.  
  
“You okay?” he asks as he pulls the shirt over his shoulders, all friendly now, like a harmless pat on the back.  
  
Jin gives himself a little shake. “Yeah. Fine. I was just—I needed a…a drink,” he says lamely, grabbing for one of the water bottles on the counter. He’s not even sure if it’s his.  
  
God does he need a drink.  
  
“Okay, well they’re almost finished, so we should probably…” He nods toward the door.  
  
Jin nods back quickly. “Yes. Absolutely. I’ll be right behind you.”  
  
And then he wants to smack a hand over his face, because his voice is all— that came out sounding weird even if— and Kame is looking at him too now, kind of a wary slant, like he thinks maybe Jin  _meant_  something, and he— fuck. This is— _fuck_.  
  
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Kame asks him again, and this time it’s not about water bottles or choreo or making their next cue on time.  
  
Jin takes a little breath and tries to calm himself down. So it’s not going away, so what? He’ll just have to deal with it. He can deal with this. He can make this not be a problem.  
  
“Yeah,” he says, and tries to mean it. “Yes, I’m fine, sorry, just…tired.” It ends on a little helpless shrug. Kame looks at him for another moment or two before giving him a little smile.  
  
“Okay, well…we should go then?”  
  
“Yeah,” Jin agrees. “We should go.”  
  
And he follows Kame back out to the stage, and doesn’t think about it anymore.  
  
He still fucks up the break.  
  
*      *      *  
  
“Stop taking all the good pieces,” Koki barks at Ueda as Ueda squirrels away another two slices of meat from the grill. By the time he’s stopped glaring and turned back to it, Taguchi has already taken the third. Koki sighs and plucks up another batch to spread out over the fire.  
  
Jin glances at Kame, who smiles back at him around a bite of beef tongue.  
  
“I really think it would be good if we could run the choreography one more time before the show tomorrow,” Nakamaru is saying as Koki knocks Ueda’s chopsticks away from the grill with his own, guarding his kill. “We start out okay, but we get all out of sync somewhere in the middle.”  
  
“So what else is new?” Koki says, turning one of his meat pieces.  
  
“I’m too tired for more rehearsal,” Ueda says. His eyes flick over at Koki when Koki reaches away for the sauce, and in a blink there are only two pieces left on the grill.  
  
Koki stares. Then glares at Ueda, who chews innocently, attention on his plate.  
  
“I will crush you like a bug.”  
  
“Try it,” Ueda smirks.  
  
“I’m not talking about a full-on rehearsal,” Nakamaru continues. “Just running through it a few times in front of the mirror to make sure we’re together.”  
  
“What exactly makes that not a rehearsal?” Jin asks.  
  
“No music?” Taguchi offers. “It’s a re-look-sal.”  
  
Everyone groans. Ueda throws one of Koki’s meat pieces at Taguchi. Koki threatens to shove Ueda’s face against the grill.  
  
“I can’t do a rehearsal tonight,” Kame says, finishing up the last bit of meat on his plate and ignoring the brawl starting at the opposite corner of the table.  
  
“Oh yeah?” Koki says, both hands occupied trying to hold Ueda’s arm away from the grill. “Hot threesome with a couple of fangirls?”  
  
Kame bats eyelashes at him. “Foursome.”  
  
Jin, meanwhile, feels caught between glaring at Koki for the eyelashes and picturing Kame in bed with three women, which is sort of simultaneously hot and unsettling. (For which he also blames Koki.) “Don’t be a pig,” he grumbles, and steals the meat Koki is guarding just to drive home his point.  
  
“I will  _seriously_  cut a bitch,” Koki says, letting go of Ueda and making a grab for Jin’s chopsticks—but Jin will be damned if he’s going to let anyone come between him and a hot piece of meat.  
  
Or, um. Something like that.  
  
Kame is standing up now, fishing a few bills out of his wallet to cover his share of the meal, and Jin shrugs out of Koki’s angry grip with a little frown. “Wait, you’re leaving now?”  
  
“What?” Kame glances up as he sticks the wallet back in his pocket. “Oh—yeah, I have to meet someone.”  
  
“Oh.” Jin isn’t pouting. Jin doesn’t pout, it’s totally fine that Kame is leaving. “Well…see you back at the hotel?”  
  
“Yeah,” Kame says with a little twist of a smile. “Sure. See you there.” Then he waves to the others. “See you guys.”  
  
He runs a hand through his hair, sweeping it out of his face as he glances around again. Heading for the exit now, and Jin watches him weaving through the narrow spaces between the tables, still a bit of an obstacle course even though the place is practically empty. It’s warm in here, warmer sitting close to the grills, and Jin sees him pluck at his t-shirt as he rounds the last corner, fluffing it away from his chest to cool himself off.  
  
As he pushes through the door, Jin sees his head tilt back like a sigh, like even that tiny breeze is a welcome relief, and then Jin is up from his chair too.  
  
“Where are you going?” Nakamaru says, glancing from Jin’s discarded chopsticks and the meat still on his plate up to his face.  
  
“Uh, bathroom,” Jin improvises. And then he’s off between the tables.  
  
It’s just as sultry out on the street, a patchwork of starlight and streetlight setting the edges of dark corners aglow. He glances up and down the road, and there’s Kame just a few yards ahead, walking through a pool of brightness.  
  
Kame stops when Jin calls out to him, turns around with a puzzled question on his face as Jin jogs up to him, surreptitiously wiping sticky, sweaty fingers on the back of his jeans. When he comes to a stop just a few feet away, he rests his hands in his back pockets and tries to catch his breath. It wasn’t even that far.  
  
“Is something wrong?” Kame asks, glancing past him, back toward the restaurant.  
  
“What?” Jin glances back too. “Oh, no—no, nothing’s wrong. I just…”  
  
He stares at Kame, at the tendrils of hair falling across his face. The little spot where a few strands stick to his cheek, just below his ear. The neck of his t-shirt is all stretched out, pulled on and off too many times, and it gaps a little at the sides, a light sheen of sweat across his collarbones.  
  
Jin’s mind goes kind of blank.  
  
He knows what he wants. But when he opens his mouth, nothing comes out.  
  
Kame is watching him with…Jin isn’t sure what to make of that expression. It falls away from Jin’s face for a moment, studies his shoulders and his awkward feet, his hands in his pockets. Then Kame meets his eyes again really suddenly, looking straight into him, and it’s kind of a shock. Because right in that moment, Jin is almost sure that Kame knows. Kame  _wants_.  
  
 _Do it. Just…do it, please._  
  
But then there’s a little blink, almost a shudder, and something comes over Kame—pushes his shoulders down and that look in his eyes away. It’s like a candle guttering out, and Jin feels it too, something suddenly cooler in the balmy air.  
  
“Jin?” Kame prompts, only politely quizzical now. The smile is a little uneasy.  
  
Jin breathes a laugh and looks away. He can feel the flush spreading down his neck, but maybe Kame will just think it’s the heat. It’s dark out here anyway. “Nothing, sorry,” he says, ruffling the hair at the back of his neck. It’s starting to stick to him, like everything else. “I was just going to ask you if you had an extra pair of socks I could borrow for the show tomorrow—I forgot to pack them. But it’s no big deal, we can figure it out later.”  
  
“Okay,” Kame says, and Jin plays it cool, pretends Kame’s not looking at him like he’s a math problem Kame can’t work out. “Yeah, sure—just stop by my room tomorrow, I’ll lend you some.”  
  
“Okay,” Jin nods, like that’s a load off his mind. “Cool, thanks.”  
  
“No problem.” Kame gives him another little smile. “See you later?”  
  
“Yeah, sure,” Jin nods again, totally cool. “See you.”  
  
He stays there for a while, letting out a long, slow breath as he watches Kame walk away. Watches him dip in and out of the lamplight, and the air is so warm and heavy Jin can feel his shirt sticking to his shoulder blades like palms against his skin.  
  
Then he stops watching, because that’s not helping. Tries to remember what he was doing before this, and—ah. Right. Dinner.  
  
His meat has, of course, been stolen by the time he settles back into his seat, but whatever, it would have been cold by now anyway. And there’s more. He plucks up another piece and arranges it over the fire. Koki and Taguchi are now having an argument about proper grill etiquette, which mainly consists of Koki complaining and Taguchi trying to be diplomatic to everyone without actually saying anything that might provoke Ueda, who is still focused on his dinner.  
  
Jin tries not to think about Kame, because that won’t help him digest.  
  
“You okay?”  
  
Jin looks up. Nakamaru is watching him, looking slightly concerned, and Jin realizes his thoughts must have been showing on his face again. He tries to sweep them off with an easy smile, but Nakamaru doesn’t seem totally convinced. Leaves him be though.  
  
It doesn’t really occur to him until an hour later, when the rest of them are flagging down cabs on the deserted street and debating whether they’ll be able to get in through the back entrance to the hotel at this hour or if they need to go through the lobby, to wonder where Kame was going.  
  
*      *      *  
  
Sometimes he lets it happen. Sometimes late at night when his thoughts won’t slow down and his body prickles with the need to be touched, Kame wanders into his mind, and he just lets it happen. Lets him crawl on top and trail his hot mouth down the side of Jin’s neck, lets him slide a hand down the front of Jin’s sleep pants, or curl up behind him and push inside. Make Jin groan. Make Jin come.  
  
He knows it’s a mistake, knows it just makes him want to let it happen for real, because Kame in his mind can’t be half as good as Kame in the flesh—but that comes with other stuff, and he still doesn’t think he’s ready to face that yet. He’s already fucked this up once, and he doesn’t want to open that door again unless he’s sure he’s ready to walk through it.  
  
But then Kame will catch his eye across the stage, or in the mirror, or over a styrofoam cup of noodles from the conbini, and Jin wants him so bad he thinks maybe he doesn’t give a shit.  
  
*      *      *

 _Summer_  
  
The official wrap party was right at the end of the tour, with all the juniors and the staff, with managers and agents and senpai who wanted to wish them congratulations. That one was more like work, all glad-handing and giving thanks, and even now that he’s been back for a few months Jin still feels out of practice at that. There was an open bar, but you could hardly drink anything with all the younger ones looking up to you and all the bosses looking down at you. It was not Jin’s idea of a party.  
  
This one is more like it.  
  
Ueda’s parents are out of town for the weekend, so they’ve got the run of the house and even a few choice bottles from his father’s liquor cabinet. (Jin neither knows nor cares whether Ueda’s father is aware of this generous donation or not.) Koki’s brought a girl who kind of looks like she could have been an AV star in another life, and Pi is passing around shots. Ryo shows up with half of Kanjani around ten. Kame’s running late. Nakamaru is completely smashed, which might be the funniest thing Jin has ever seen.  
  
Pi flops down onto the couch between Jin and the armrest with a big gin and tonic for each of them. He elbows Jin in the ribs until he scoots over closer to Koki’s…is she a girlfriend? Jin has no idea, but she seems to be pretty into him whoever she is.  
  
“Have you seen the bathrooms in this place?” Pi says. “I think the sinks are made out of marble.”  
  
“I like the fuzzy red toilet seat covers myself,” Koki says, lifting his drink in salute from the other end of the couch.  
  
Pi slides down in his seat, smacking his lips as he licks the gin off them. “I should get a place like this,” he says, looking around and nodding.  
  
“You want to live way out here in the sticks?” Jin says, raising eyebrows at him.  
  
“Not out here—more central.”  
  
“I don’t think they make these more central.”  
  
“I’ll build one.”  
  
Jin nods. “You’re drunk.”  
  
“Nope,” Pi nods toward Nakamaru, who has fallen asleep, and is very gradually sliding out of the armchair opposite. “He’s drunk.”  
  
“That doesn’t mean that you aren’t—”  
  
There’s a little commotion over in the front hall, sort of drunken cheering and people talking over each other. Jin leans over to try to see what it’s about, but the angle is bad—all he can see is a bunch of people crowding toward the door.  
  
The AV girl clears her throat pointedly, and Jin quickly sits up and takes his hand off her knee, which he had unwittingly been using for balance. “Sorry,” he says, with what he hopes is a charming smile.  
  
“Hey,” Kame says, and Jin feels that curl again as he finally makes it into the living room, looking a bit windblown. His hair is sort of damp at the ends—it must have started raining again while they’ve been inside—and he runs a hand through it to shake it out, pulls at his t-shirt a bit where it’s started sticking to his front. There’s another guy kind of hovering at his shoulder, looks like he must have just arrived too—and he does look vaguely familiar, but Jin can’t place him. “Sorry I’m late. What did I—holy crap,” he falters, catching sight of Nakamaru, whose knee is now nearly touching the carpet. “What did you give him?”  
  
“He’s totally not dead!” Pi shouts, loudly enough that it makes Nakamaru startle and slip the rest of the way out of the chair and into an undignified heap on the floor.  
  
Kame looks really good.  
  
He catches Jin’s eye and smiles at him.  
  
That weird guy is still just sort of standing there awkwardly, like he’s expecting to be let into the circle. Standing uncomfortably close to Kame, actually—Jin is kind of surprised Kame hasn’t noticed, he’s practically stuck to Kame’s side. Jin decides he doesn’t like him.  
  
But at least he goes, finally, when Kame heads off to fix himself a drink.  
  
“Do we know that guy?” Jin asks under his breath, gesturing toward Kame’s stalker with his glass. He’s  _still there_ , like, talking to him while Kame is trying to figure out what to have. What an annoying little shit.  
  
Koki gives him a look. “Are you serious?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“He was on lead guitar, Jin.”  
  
Jin just blinks at him, nonplussed.  
  
“In the band.”  
  
“On the tour you just finished…?” Koki’s girlfriend adds blandly, like even she thinks Jin is a total idiot. Jin is tempted to ask “and who are  _you_  again?” but he hasn’t had quite enough to drink yet to not mind getting slapped.  
  
Instead he looks over at the guy again, frowning, trying to recognize him. “He was?”  
  
“Yes,” Koki says. “You actually stood around and had a conversation with him for about an hour at the wrap party. Remember?”  
  
Jin tries to think. He does remember standing around in a group for a while talking to people, but that was near last call and the only face he actually remembers is Kame’s. He’s pretty sure Koki was there though, and there were some other guys who didn’t seem like management, probably from the band, or maybe the crew.  
  
“Oh,” he says. “I guess I forgot.”  
  
Koki snorts at him and takes another sip of his beer.  
  
*      *      *  
  
A bunch more people show up a little later on—he thinks they might be friends of Ueda’s or something, because no one else really seems to know them, but they turn out to be pretty cool. Jin spends a little while talking to some drummer guy with a tattoo behind his ear who went to Boston University, and it makes Jin a little nostalgic for California. The guy’s English is better than his though. Hell, his vocabulary is better than Josh’s.  
  
Kame is always around somewhere. They don’t really get to talk much, but Jin is always sort of aware of where he is, keeping him somewhere in his peripheral vision. Sometimes Kame will catch his eye across the room and give a little gesture of his head that tells Jin someone’s boring him, and Jin feels that little spark of secrecy, like they’re talking in a code no one else around them can understand. (Although Jin’s answering gestures get a little bit clumsier and less-secret with each drink—Kame has to turn a laugh into a cough when Jin knocks one of the empty scotch bottles off the bar with his elbow. But even that’s kind of nice.)  
  
Pi leaves after a while and graciously offers to pour Nakamaru into a cab on his way, and Jin finds himself adrift again. Kame’s disappeared from the room at some point, but Jin doesn’t think he’s gone home. He doesn’t think Kame would leave without saying anything.  
  
The drinks are actually really going to his head by now though—Ueda’s dad has really good taste—and he thinks maybe some more snacks would be good. They finished off the stuff that was laid out ages ago, and Jin has no compunction about raiding other people’s fridges, especially when those people can afford marble fixtures and 50-year-old scotch.  
  
He swings around the corner into Ueda’s parents’ massive gleaming kitchen and—whoops, occupied, that’s awkward.  
  
He slips back out again.  
  
Seriously, who makes out in someone else’s kitchen? Kitchens are for food, not for face-sucking. And Jin is hungry, dammit. He doesn’t think they saw him, cause they seemed kind of distracted in the half-second he was actually looking, but even if he’s super quiet they will probably notice him circling around to the giant subzero that’s like two feet away from where they’re pressed up against the wall. Maybe.  
  
He peeks around the corner again, just to check.  
  
And then the bottom drops out.  
  
It’s Kame.  
  
He doesn’t know why he’s still standing here, staring at them. He doesn’t want to see, doesn’t want to hear what they’re saying—can’t, in fact, can only hear low secret mumbles and little chuckles into each other’s mouths, and for a wobbly moment Jin actually feels like he might be sick. It’s the drinks. Just the drinks, overdid it on the drinks, and maybe a little bit the shock, and he’s not really going to interrupt them by doubling over on somebody else’s kitchen floor, but then hey, maybe Kame would stop tongue-fucking that guy and take him to the hospital…  
  
God, fuck, he needs some air.  
  
“Hey, whoa, watch it,” somebody says when Jin nearly bumps into him as he turns around. There’s a hand on his shoulder to steady him, and he needs it apparently, because he sways a little bit against the wall. It’s one of the strangers, one of Ueda’s weird friends, and he’s saying something more, but Jin isn’t really listening.  
  
“I’m fine—sorry,” he mumbles, and pushes past him, following the path of least resistance. The living room is too crowded so he ends up in the hallway, stumbles toward the bathroom and locks himself in.  
  
Then he presses his hands to his face and leans back against the door. God, his head hurts. It didn’t hurt a minute ago. A minute ago it was a party, all fun and floaty and stupid in the nice way. Now he just feels like he’s got some kind of horrible flu.  
  
He keeps seeing it. Kame pressed between the wall and  _that guy_ , Kame  _liking_  it, and he needs a drink, but that’s the last thing he needs.  
  
He fishes out a slightly crumpled pack of cigarettes instead, taps one out and jams the tip in his mouth. His hand is shaking a little as he pulls out the lighter, tries to flick it on, but it doesn’t catch. Ten times and it doesn’t catch. Fifteen times.  
  
He drops his head back against the door with a sigh. It throbs.  
  
Reluctantly, he puts the lighter back in his pocket, takes the cigarette out of his mouth and sticks it back in the box. And he feels even stupider for everything he’s been thinking all evening, feeling like they were playing some kind of game, all secret and close and shit, when really  _that_   _guy_  has been right next to him all night, and Jin has just been…some guy across the room. It’s probably not even a recent development, they came in together for fuck’s sake. And Koki knew who he was, didn’t seem at all surprised. Only seemed surprised that Jin didn’t know who he was, and that really is sort of surprising given the way things have been lately with the two of them. Comfortable again. Close, with nothing awkward or complicated or—well, not as much anyway, they were  _getting_  there, and it was almost…almost like it was.  
  
Just like Jin wanted it.  
  
Of  _course_  Kame is with someone else. It even makes sense when he thinks about it, kind of explains a lot actually. He just…didn’t think about it. Didn’t think about anything but himself, and what else is new. What, did he think Kame would just be hanging around waiting for him after two years of nothing? How pathetic is that?  
  
The door rattles against his back as someone pounds on it with a fist, and it makes his head throb unpleasantly again.  
  
“Hey—everything okay in there?” Ueda’s voice calls from the other side.  
  
Jin clears his throat, tries to figure out what normal is supposed to sound like. “Um, yeah, totally fine. Be out in a sec.”  
  
“If you throw up in anything that isn’t the toilet, you’d better be cleaning it up.”  
  
Jin grumbles. “I said I’m fine, okay? Can’t a guy take a piss without getting a lecture?”  
  
“Yeah, okay—but if you piss in anything that isn’t the toilet, you’re cleaning that up too…”  
  
Jin listens to the footsteps as they wander off down the hall again.  
  
He probably should get back out there anyway.  
  
He runs a little cool water from the tap and splashes it over his face, patting it dry on one of the towels on the rack—they really are red and fluffy, just like the toilet seat covers. Then he unlocks the door.  
  
The party has lost a bit of shine and a few more people by the time he gets back out to the living room. Some of Ueda’s friends are doing shots over by the coffee table and one of them is playing a stumbly rendition of “Heart and Soul” on the baby grand in the corner. Jin throws a glance at the bar, but decides against it—the music is already making his head hurt. Some water would maybe be a good idea. And right, snacks, if he can keep them down.  
  
He pulls up short as he’s about to round the corner into the kitchen again, because fuck, that’s the last thing he needs right now, but…no. Okay, no, the coast is clear. It’s empty.  
  
He fills a glass from the ice maker, winces at the clatter, then runs the water and fills it up to the brim. It doesn’t help his mood much, doesn’t help much of anything immediately, but the cool feels good on his throat and he knows it will help something eventually. Somehow.  
  
“Hey—you okay?”  
  
Jin glances over toward the doorway, and there’s Kame leaning against the doorframe, looking at him. He nods toward the glass.  
  
“Too many gin and tonics,” Jin says, trying for a sheepish smile, but it probably comes out a little flat. He can’t seem to look Kame in the eye.  
  
“Did you try the scotch? It was amazing. Might have to buy a bottle myself.”  
  
“A little. I don’t know if I really tasted it much though.”  
  
Kame laughs—a low, warm sound, and it makes Jin ache again, just a little.  
  
“No, I guess not.”  
  
Jin forces himself to look up at him—really look at him this time, no hiding. No ignoring.  
  
He isn’t quite the same as before. He doesn’t curl into himself so easily anymore, doesn’t look like he always has the weight of the world on his shoulders. Doesn’t look at Jin like Jin is the beginning and end of his world. It’s not fair to want that back, and he doesn’t, he really doesn’t, it’s just…  
  
“Kame, I need to…”  
  
He’s started it before he even decides to, and maybe that’s the way it should be. Just put it all out there, all the facts, let him deal with it how he wants to. Make him deal with it for a while. He started it, the little fucker, and it’s his fault Jin is so fucking confused, so fucking in love.  
  
Kame is listening, eyes more uneasy with each beat of silence.  
  
But even after everything, it still feels like he has all this stuff to lose, and Kame…Kame doesn’t feel that way about him anymore. Who knows, maybe he never did. Maybe Jin was always the one who was confused.  
  
“…I need to go home,” Jin says. And then a little chuckle, and he takes another sip from the water glass.  
  
“Yeah,” Kame smiles too, and Jin tries not to notice how he looks relieved. “We—I’ll probably head out before long too. It’s getting late.”  
  
The ‘we’ sticks unpleasantly, somewhere in his squishy brain, but Jin decides not to let it bother him. It’s not really his business who Kame goes home with, and it’s fine. He can be fine.  
  
What’s the alternative?  
  
He leaves the half-empty glass by the sink and walks toward the doorway.  
  
“See you on Wednesday?” Kame says as he lets him pass, and Jin pauses for a bit, blinking—his eyes still feel sort of dried out, maybe he should’ve finished the water.  
  
“What’s Wednesday again?”  
  
“The photoshoot—eight-thirty, right?”  
  
“Oh, right.” He’s still not sure off the top of his head, but he trusts Kame—Kame always knows the schedule better than he does. “Um, yeah, sure. I’ll be there.”  
  
He makes his way around the living room, saying a few goodbyes to the people still left. Boston University guy gives him the address of that place he mentioned earlier that supposedly serves real American hamburgers. Says to ask for Sachiko—she brings you free french fries if you let her practice English with you.  
  
It’s still raining a little when he gets outside, but not as bad as before. Just a warm drizzle. He buys a new lighter from the conbini on the corner and lights a cigarette on the way to the train station, keeping an eye out for cabs.  
  
He’s fine. Not great—but he’ll be fine, eventually, and it’s probably even better this way. Uncomplicated, just like he wanted it. Maybe a relief, actually, because now he can finally stop thinking about it. It doesn’t matter anymore.  
  
He hails a cab just as he reaches the end of the next block, stubs out his cigarette before climbing inside. The air is warm inside too, but at least it keeps him out of the rain.  
  
*      *      *


	4. 2009

_Winter_  
  
She feels so soft.  
  
He loves the scent of her shampoo, the way it stays on her pillow a little even when she’s not there, and it’s even stronger when she is. When his nose is buried in her strawberry-blonde curls, and his fingers draw lazily across her smooth stomach where she’s tucked up against him. He feels her laugh when it tickles.  
  
“Jin, I’m tired,” Erin mumbles into the pillow through a smile. “I have to work in the morning.”  
  
She sounds reluctant, tempted. There is definitely some wiggle room there. Jin smiles into the nape of her neck. “It wouldn’t have to take long.”  
  
She snorts. “That’s your pitch?”  
  
“I’m trying to be accommodating,” he says, leaning up a bit to make room if she wants it, and she settles down on her back in his arms. She’s not buying it in the slightest but her eyes sort of think he’s cute anyway, and he can work with that. “You know, be an adult about this. Give and take.”  
  
“I knew we never should have had that conversation,” she chuckles again, but her eyes are half-lidded, and her hand brushes down the side of his neck. “You took entirely the wrong point from it.”  
  
“Give and take…” he singsongs, leaning down to kiss her broad smile. It’s soft too, and familiar, and he loves the way she arches into him slightly. When he runs a hand a bit further up her side and caresses a soft breast, she sighs and opens up for him.  
  
*      *      *  
  
Erin is in a hurry, and Jin is making toast.  
  
He’s learned it’s really best to stay out of her way when she’s frazzled like this. The first few times she stayed over he felt like he needed to help her with stuff, like finding the hairdryer and looking for her bra down the back of the couch, because she kept snapping things at him as she rushed from room to room, adding another piece of clothing each time between sips of coffee. But he’s since realized that her frantic questions are really mostly her just talking to herself, and she gets way more frazzled if he actually tries to answer her or help in any way. So he makes toast and waits for her to settle.  
  
It’s not a bad arrangement. Jin’s brain can’t make sentences in the morning anyway.  
  
Her hair is dry when she reappears this time, and she’s got her nylons in one hand, the other readjusting her tailored skirt. Jin is not an expert, but as best he remembers from the last time he wore a skirt, he’s pretty sure those two are supposed to go on the other way around. But he won’t criticize.  
  
“I can’t find my camisole,” she says as she perches on one of the dining chairs, grabbing a sip of her coffee and fiddling one foot into her stockings. “Did you see where it ended up?”  
  
Jin’s mouth is full of toast at the moment, so he just shakes his head. He brings her plate over from the counter and sets it down in front of her, and she grabs a bite of her slice before going back to the nylons.  
  
Jin sits down across from her and munches on his toast, only watching a little.  
  
“Oh shit, my necklace. Shit,” she mumbles to herself, and then she pulls the stockings up the rest of the way with her skirt all bunched up, and Jin grins when he gets a nice view of her black underwear with the subtle lace edging. He’s totally not leering anymore by the time she turns around again though. Just eating toast.  
  
She doesn’t care anyway, just plucks at the fabric over her calves as she rushes back into the bedroom to find whatever she realized she was missing right before she pulled up the nylons.  
  
By the time she has her appearance sorted and has eaten about half of her breakfast, Jin is on his second cup of coffee. He stays out of the way until he sees her heading for her shoes, and then he leaves his coffee cup on the table to go send her off.  
  
“I’ll call you after work, okay?” she says, pushing her purse strap up onto her shoulder when it slips down again. “It might be late, but I’ll touch base at least.”  
  
“Cool,” Jin nods.  
  
She sighs, pausing a little in the doorway. Smiles at him for the first time this morning, and there it is. The settle.  
  
It works like this. Jin really likes the fact that it works.  
  
He knows she’s going to lean up and kiss him goodbye, and she does. It’s slow and easy, all the morning frenzy gone and only softness again. He feels like an adult when he’s with her, and he’s not sure he’s ever really felt like that before. She even has a proper job in a nice office with business hours and everything. Jin’s never dated anyone with a proper job before.  
  
“Bye,” she murmurs against his lips. Then one last little kiss, and she slips out of his arms and out the door.  
  
*      *      *  
  
There used to be a Family Mart just down the street from the rehearsal studios, in between the noodle shop and the karaoke place. It was pretty much the same as all the other Family Marts on all the other corners in every other neighborhood of the city, except that this one was here. They went right by it on the way back to the train station after dance classes and stopped in to buy stuff they weren’t supposed to eat when they were heading home from rehearsals at midnight. The guy who ran it was this really creepy old dude with a permanent frown who seemed to hate kids, and hated them even more when they came in gangs of four and five and six to mess up his magazine racks looking for their senpai and walk around all the aisles laughing and pushing each other into the displays without actually buying more than a sandwich or a candy bar. He always liked Kame though, for some weird reason.  
  
Anyway, it’s not there anymore. It’s a boutique full of frilly skirts and shoes with bows on them now.  
  
Kame dated the guitarist for nearly a year. Jin only knew about it when they broke up because he overheard Kame saying something to Nakamaru, and Kame seemed kind of upset for a while. He never really talked about it with Jin—somehow they just avoided the topic altogether, even while he was still dating the guy—and Jin could never quite decide whether that made him feel resentful or relieved. Eventually it didn’t really matter anymore, because for Kame there were other guys, and for Jin there were other girls, and…Jin was fine with that. That was the way it should be.  
  
Jin didn’t want that anymore.  
  
There were more concerts and more singles too. A drama with Taguchi, and a variety show with fucking horses and camping and creepy janitor guys with lie-detector tests. There were women and there was sex, and there was a fuckton of drinking. And a fuckton of tabloids calling him an asshole for the drinking.  
  
Jin doesn’t miss the Family Mart all that much anymore, even when it’s late and he’s alone and it’s cold outside, and all he wants is something to warm him up before the ride home. There’s a Lawson down the street, and it might not be the same, but some things aren’t supposed to stay the same.  
  
Anyway, the woman who runs the Lawson always gives him his hot chocolates for free.  
  
*      *      *  
  
“This is the one that pulls the focus, right?” Jin asks, fiddling with one of the knobs on the side of the camera.  
  
“Ah, no, Akanishi-san, actually it—”  
  
“Whoops.” Jin steadies it with a hand, the cameraman steadying it as well from the other side, then reaching around to expertly tighten the bolt again.  
  
“That’s actually the pan control. The focus is here.” He points out another dial, and Jin leans down again to look through the lens as the cameraman turns the dial up and down, slowly. The sunglasses are kind of in the way, but they might mess up his hair if he puts them up on his head, which would be even more of a pain in the ass.  
  
When the cameraman finally politely tells him that he needs to get ready for the next shot, Jin hops down from the little platform and dusts off his hands on the back of his jeans. The chorus of “Love Yourself” is playing over and over in the background in little fits and starts, backing up and jumping forward again and never really getting anywhere. Nakamaru and Taguchi are sitting over by the playback screen laughing over some piece of what they’ve already shot with the PV-making guys hovering around them. Koki is wandering around behind the set kicking holes in the giant red styrofoam heart. Ueda is nowhere to be seen—maybe off at the restroom—and Kame…Kame is falling asleep sideways on a folding chair.  
  
He’s got his fingers wedged between his chin and the chair back, and he seems sort of carefully arranged so as not to mess up either his hair or his makeup, and he looks exhausted and really, really uncomfortable. For a moment Jin thinks about leaving him there, because maybe even uncomfortable sleep is better than no sleep—but then Kame gives a little twitch like a dog dreaming about chasing a rabbit and wakes himself up again, and Jin just can’t.  
  
He swings by the cooler in the corner and picks up a couple of chilled water bottles on the way. Taps Kame on the shoulder with one of them. He tried to make noise as he walked up, but Kame still startles a little, blinking sluggishly like he can’t quite get Jin into focus. He stares at Jin, then at the water bottle before he puts two and two together and realizes Jin is offering it to him.  
  
“Thanks,” he says, taking it and twisting around to sit properly in his chair.  
  
“Merry Christmas,” Jin says, taking a seat next to him and twisting the cap off his own water bottle.  
  
Kame gives a dry laugh. “God. I almost forgot it was Christmas.” He takes a sip from the water bottle and then slumps back in his chair a bit, as low as he can get without running afoul of the lady with the comb and blowdryer in the corner.  
  
“Long week?”  
  
“You could say that.” The smile is bitter, and Jin watches as he takes another sip from the water bottle. Something tells him that isn’t just long days of filming and too many TV appearances under there.  
  
“Something wrong?” he nudges. It’s a little bit risky, maybe, because they don’t really do that—not about personal things anymore. Somehow it seems safer that way. But whatever, Kame can tell him or not tell him, it’s up to him.  
  
Kame definitely looks like he’s got something on his mind, and for a little while it seems like it’s heavy on his tongue too. But then he glances over, and there’s this little blink, like he’s just remembered who he’s talking to, and Jin feels…well, he’s not sure what.  
  
Maybe it is safer that way. Definitely simpler.  
  
Then Kame gives a small, slightly loopy laugh.  
  
“Can you take off those sunglasses?” he asks. “All I can see is my own reflection, and I look like shit.”  
  
Jin grins. He plucks off the sunglasses and folds them into the vee of his t-shirt. “Better?” he says, turning back to Kame.  
  
Kame gives his face a thoughtful look. “Much. You still need a shave though.”  
  
“You’re never satisfied.”  
  
“So I’m told,” he says, and there’s that little bitter note again, and…  
  
Yeah, Jin’s not going to touch that. Safer.  
  
He glances over at a little bubble of laughter from the corner—Ueda has joined Taguchi and Nakamaru, and the cameras are still hanging around them, but the AD guy has noticed Jin and Kame sitting together now and seems interested. Kame has gone sort of unfocused again, fiddling with his water bottle cap and staring out across the set. Every once in a while he blinks, reeeally slowly. Yeah, this’ll make great TV.  
  
“I need a piss,” Jin decides, getting to his feet before the AD guy can recruit one of the cameras to come pay attention to Kame. “If they’re looking for me, tell them I’ll be back in five.”  
  
Kame hums distractedly. Jin leaves the water bottle on the floor next to the chair and starts for the door, but Kame blinks awake again when Jin crosses his field of vision.  
  
“Jin?”  
  
“Yeah?” Jin says, turning back. Kame sort of looks at him for a moment, and Jin can’t tell whether that’s trying to sort out his words or just being half-asleep.  
  
Then Kame smiles at him—a little grateful, and a lot tired. “Merry Christmas.”  
  
Jin purses his lips around a smile and nods back.  
  
*      *      *  
  
“Are you sure that’s how you’re supposed to do it?” Jin asks, watching her feet as she moves them around weirdly, stepping carefully on the folded-up towel over and over. She’s got a hand on his shoulder for balance, and he has to keep taking a step back every couple of minutes because she’s turning around in a slow circle.  
  
“That’s what the thing says,” she says, flicking a stray curl out of her face and leaving a stripe of sticky flour near her temple. “Why, didn’t your mom ever make them like this when you were a kid?”  
  
“I don’t…think so…” Jin says, still watching her feet, and the way her dark pinkish toenails wiggle a little with each step. He tries to imagine his mother standing in her kitchen in her bare feet with her pants rolled up to the knees and trying to balance on a big lump of dough, and he has to duck his head into his shoulder to muffle the snort.  
  
The timer on the counter goes off again, and Erin steps off of the towel, bending down to pick it up from the floor. “How did she make noodles then?” she asks as she unwraps the thing and pulls out the plastic bag, dumping the clumpy white mass onto the stretch of clean counter.  
  
“I don’t know. Bought them from the store in a bag?”  
  
Erin pauses with the rolling pin in her hand, looking surprised. “Seriously? But her food all tastes so good.”  
  
Jin shrugs. “I guess that’s because she left stuff like this to the professionals…”  
  
Erin gives him a narrow look, but doesn’t take the bait, instead putting her muscle into the process of flattening out the dough again with the rolling pin.  
  
Jin rests his elbows on the other side of the counter and watches her work the material. Occasionally she makes little frustrated noises and has to pick off pieces that have stuck to the pin, and sometimes just when it seems like she’s got it all spread out perfectly she folds the whole thing up and starts from scratch again.  
  
“How many more times do you have to do this?” Jin asks, chin resting on the heel of his hand.  
  
“Um,” she glances around for the flour-dusted piece of paper she left over near the edge of the counter, “I think maybe once more? Then I have to let it rest while I make the broth and the toppings.”  
  
The dough is going back into the bag now, being wrapped up in the towel again for another stomping session. Jin offers his shoulder again as she steps on top of the pile and finds her footing.  
  
“So, did your mom make noodles like this when you were a kid then?” Jin asks. He has to grab onto the counter himself a bit when she misjudges her balance and yanks on the neck of his t-shirt.  
  
She laughs. “Are you kidding? My mother didn’t even know we had a kitchen. She had ‘people’ for that stuff.”  
  
“So, wait—she didn’t teach you to cook anything at all?”  
  
Erin shakes her head, still smirking. “Why do you think I suck so bad at it?”  
  
“You don’t suck. You make really good, um…pizza.”  
  
Erin laughs again. “You are such a horrible liar.”  
  
“Well it’s not even like you do it that much—I haven’t tasted all the things you can cook, so how do I know if you suck at cooking them?”  
  
“That’s exactly why I don’t cook them,” she counters. And then she hops down off the towel again and runs a hand through her hair, trying to tuck some of the loose strands back into the clip keeping the rest of it out of the way. “Anyway, this stuff is more fun. And it’s not even that hard, it’s all pretty straightforward. I can teach myself.”  
  
“I guess,” Jin agrees, plucking up the recipe she printed from the web. It’s mostly in English, but it’s got some random Japanese sprinkled throughout in romaji, and she’s scribbled even more in the margins, translating translated terms back to their Japanese originals for herself. “And hey, if you learn enough stuff now, maybe someday we’ll have kids you can teach it to.”  
  
She laughs loudly at that, already folding the dough over itself on the counter again and driving the heels of her hands into it. “I don’t know about  _that_.”  
  
“What?” Jin nudges, resting his elbows on the counter again. “You don’t think you can learn fast enough?”  
  
“No, no—cooking I can master if I put my mind to it. Kids…I’m not so sure about that one.”  
  
Jin blinks up at her, a little catch in his chest. She’s still focused on kneading the dough, trying to fold it over so it keeps its neat edges and gradually-smoothing shape.  
  
It’s not…he doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it, it’s not like they’re seriously talking about stuff, it’s just…it never really occurred to him. That she might not.  
  
But that’s stupid, she didn’t say  _no_ —she just said she wasn’t sure, and that doesn’t mean  _no_.  
  
“I think you’d make a great mom,” he says.  
  
She stops and gives him kind of a surprised look. Then she laughs a little and goes back to her kneading. “I’m not quite sure how to take that coming from the guy I’m sleeping with.”  
  
“You would though,” he says, and he’s not really sure why he’s pushing this right now, she doesn’t really seem interested in the topic. “You’re all organized and stuff, and you…know about what’s happening in the world.”  
  
“Jin, there’s a lot more to being a mom than knowing how to read a newspaper and write a grocery list.”  
  
“I know, but you’d be good at that stuff too.”  
  
She chuckles again, keeping her eyes on what she’s doing and using her shoulder to scratch her chin because both her hands are occupied with the rolling pin. “Maybe. I don’t know, it’s just…not really something I’ve thought about very much. Can you set the timer again? I’m going to need to check on this thing again in an hour or so.”  
  
Jin only pouts a little bit as she seals the dough into the bag again and walks away to put it in a darker corner of the counter where it won’t be in the way. But he picks up the little timer from the counter and presses the buttons until it’s set for one hour.  
  
“So,” she says, turning back to the kitchen at large. “Green onions?”  
  
*      *      *  
  
Jin secretly likes it when she gets on top—likes watching her in the moonlight and the reflected glow of the streetlights as she rides him. And the things it does to him when she moves like that—god, he could fuck her forever.  
  
Afterward, as they both catch their breath, she stretches up to pull her hair up off her neck, and Jin feels almost like he could get hard again just from the sight. His whole body is thrumming with it. With a satisfied sigh, she crawls off him and flops down beside him on the mattress. Curls closer and brushes his hair out of his face for a kiss, a little bumping of noses, and then another. “That was hot,” she says, a smile against his lips, and he buries fingers in her hair and kisses her again, because it so was. She’s amazing.  
  
Eventually they pull the covers up over themselves properly and she turns over, letting Jin snuggle up behind her while she curls up around her pillow. Jin tucks his nose into the back of her neck and wraps his arms around her waist and lets the heavy, floaty feeling just take him, lull him towards sleep.  
  
The noodles turned out pretty good. They were maybe a little spongey, but Erin said she thought that was because she didn’t cut them small enough, thought she could do better next time. Jin isn’t looking forward to having his kitchen covered in flour again and spending another four hours as a human maypole, but hey, free dinner that he doesn’t have to cook, so he’s not complaining about that.  
  
It’s just a little niggle, really—not even a  _worry_ , just a thing. It wasn’t so noticeable during the sex, but it was a little bit during dinner and kind of a lot during the afternoon, and now it’s starting to come back, and he just…doesn’t know what to do about it.  
  
He should really drop it. Awesome sex. Free food. Time to sleep now, and he doesn’t even have to sleep  _alone_ , and this is so not the time to be acting like a girl and getting all “where is this going” on her. Really not.  
  
“Erin?” he mumbles into her hair.  
  
“Hm?” she mumbles back, sounding sleepy, but not yet actually asleep.  
  
“Can I ask you something?”  
  
She takes in a long breath through her nose, and somewhere in there it turns into a yawn. “What’s that?” she says, on the exhale.  
  
Jin stares at the little freckle on her shoulder where her hair falls away, just near the crook of her neck.  
  
“Do you really not want to have kids?”  
  
She doesn’t answer for a few moments, but he can feel her body waking up a little more in his arms. Eventually she squirms a little bit, and Jin loosens his hold on her enough to let her turn over to face him. When she does, she reaches over and brushes the hair back from his face again, so they can both see each other clearly.  
  
“Does that bother you?” she asks.  
  
Jin feels it like a punch in the gut.  
  
But he doesn’t really know what to say. It feels horrible and stupid to say, “Yes of course it fucking bothers me, why would it  _not_  bother me”—but that’s how it feels. Not like they’ve talked about anything specifically, but it’s—they’re so good together, and she’s such a grownup, and— Jin’s never been in a relationship that’s lasted this long before, and he just sort of assumed…  
  
“Kind of,” he admits.  
  
A little frown pulls at Erin’s brows, and she brushes a thumb back and forth over his cheekbone. It makes him want to squirm a little bit, and so does her focus, but he resists the urge because that would only make it worse.  
  
“Okay,” she says. “Well…okay. I mean, I’m not saying I’m completely against the idea ever, it’s just…I don’t know. It’s not really something that’s been a priority for me. I’m not…really that kind of person.”  
  
Jin nods, trying to listen and show he understands, even though he really doesn’t. What does it mean to be not that kind of person? Not the mother kind? Not the marriage kind? Not the kind who likes kids at all?  
  
“Let’s just…see how things go, okay?”  
  
It’s not the answer he wanted. It’s not really an answer at all, but then what do you expect when you spring life questions on somebody in the middle of the night. It’s not like she was going to go from not interested in talking about kids to wanting lots of babies after one bowl of homemade noodles and a really good fuck.  
  
At least it’s not an actual no.  
  
“Yeah,” he agrees, hoping the dark makes the smile look easier than it feels. “Sure.”  
  
She smiles back a little, then leans in to kiss him once more before turning in the circle of his arms and curling up around her pillow again. He gets up close behind her again so it’s just like always and she won’t feel like he’s still upset or anything. Soon she’s snoring a little bit into the pillowcase.  
  
Jin closes his eyes. It takes him a long time to fall asleep.  
  
*      *      *

The choreography is not all that difficult, but Kame seems unusually intent on making sure they get it exactly right. Not that he’s usually super chill about these things, but he also doesn’t usually bark at people every time he catches someone making a mistake in the mirror. When the song loops on for the tenth time and Kame starts doing all the steps backwards so he can face them directly instead of in the mirror, Jin thinks Ueda might be getting ready to hit him again.  
  
He seems kind of stressed.  
  
It’s only gotten worse over the past few weeks, and Jin is pretty sure by now that it’s not just the filming and the promo stuff wearing him down. That would be plenty on its own from what he knows of Kame’s schedule—but he knows Kame stressed over filming, and even at its worst that doesn’t usually make him seem quite so dead-eyed. But if it’s not that…Jin really isn’t sure that it’s his place to ask. Just not asking has worked really well for them for the past few years, and fucking around with that seems kind of dangerous.  
  
Still, Jin thinks as Kame corrects Jin’s footwork in clipped tones, somebody needs to do something to chill this guy out, or Ueda won’t be the only one who wants to punch him.  
  
“Hey. You up for a drink?” he says later, when they’re back in the dressing room. Kame is just out of the shower, tugging a fresh t-shirt on over his head. He looks even more wrung out than before, if that’s possible—like the shower steamed out the last of his energy. Or something.  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“A drink,” Jin says. “Some people are hanging out at the club and I was going to go join them for a while—you interested?”  
  
It’s not the first time he’s ever offered, of course, but he won’t really be surprised if Kame says no. He usually does. Clubs aren’t really his scene, and even though they’re always in one of the back rooms, Kame says he feels like he has to be on all the time, or whatever. Jin doesn’t get it, because they’re all cool people and they don’t pester him or anything, but that’s Kame for you. He’s weird like that.  
  
That’s okay though—if he’s not up for the club, there’s always noodles, or yakiniku, or that old dive in Shinjuku. Jin’s got options.  
  
Kame looks at him thoughtfully. Runs a hand through his damp hair to shake off some of the wetness. “Like—you mean now?”  
  
Jin nods. “Pretty much. I mean, it’s nothing fancy, we can show up whenever. But I was thinking I would head over pretty soon.”  
  
Kame glances past him toward the clock. He still looks thoughtful.  
  
“Yeah, sure,” he says at length. “Just let me finish drying off.”  
  
*      *      *  
  
It’s dark and crowded just the way Jin likes it—full of chatter and drinks and people he knows. They stop over to say hi to Pi and Ryo, who already have a table staked out with slightly too many people at it. Normally Jin would probably squeeze in with them anyway, but Kame doesn’t really seem up to it and Jin doesn’t want to push him. There’ll be other nights. This one is about getting Kame to unclench a little, and he won’t do that if he feels crowded.  
  
He picks a smaller booth at the back, curved and bigger than they need, but they both slide around to the middle. Kame leans his elbows on the table and frowns into his scotch and soda, and Jin wonders what’s got him all…deflated like this. He likes the drama. He seemed happy about it when they started anyway, and Jin doesn’t think there have been any disasters since then—but then that’s just it, he doesn’t know. Kame hasn’t said anything about much of anything lately, for better or worse—he just keeps snapping at people.  
  
Jin’s not sure where to start—he’s out of practice at this.  
  
“Is it work?”  
  
Kame looks over at him, that frown twitching with confusion. “Is what work?”  
  
“Whatever is bothering you. Is it a work thing?”  
  
Kame stares at him for a little bit longer. His expression doesn’t change much, but Jin thinks he sees a flicker of surprise. Kame’s poker face has gotten so good lately, and the fact that he’s using it tells Jin there’s definitely something going on he doesn’t want to let show.  
  
“It’s not work,” Kame says as he turns back to his drink. Fiddles with his straw.  
  
Right. Okay, that’s…something. Kind of sounds like it might be an invitation to further questioning, in fact, and Jin is going to take it as such.  
  
“What is it then?”  
  
“It’s—” Kame stops, seeming to consider his words carefully. “You know. A personal thing.”  
  
“Do you want to talk about it?”  
  
Kame chuckles and finally takes a sip of his drink. “I don’t think you want to hear about it.”  
  
“Well somebody better hear about it, or by this time next week Ueda is going to rearrange your face.”  
  
Kame winces, peering over at him. “Was I that bad?”  
  
“You were an absolute shit.”  
  
There’s another little chuckle, a sip of alcohol and a sigh as he finally drops back against the back of the booth next to Jin. There’s a little bit of defeat in his shoulders, in his whole expression, as he lets the poker face fall away.  
  
“I broke up with Masato.”  
  
Jin kind of figured it would be something like that, but it still gives him an uncomfortable little twist. He tries not to let it show though—this isn’t about him and his hangups. He can suck it up for an evening, no problem.  
  
“That sucks,” he says, and means it. “I’m really sorry.”  
  
“Yeah,” Kame takes another sip of his drink. “Thanks.”  
  
Masato. Was that the announcer guy, or the photographer? Jin can’t remember. He’s sure he’s probably met the guy once or twice—it happens—but he can’t really picture a face. He doesn’t usually pay that much attention.  
  
“How long was it?”  
  
“A year and a half,” Kame says, with a grimace. “A little more than that.”  
  
“Wow.” Jin nods again, stirring his drink a little. “Yeah. Yeah, that really sucks.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
The words are only coming in dribs and drabs, but Kame has already decided to tell him—Jin can see that. Kame sips a little more of his drink, and Jin just waits it out, lets him settle.  
  
Masato is a sportswriter, apparently—that’s right, it was a sportswriter guy, not an announcer guy—Kame met him at a party and went out with him at first mostly because he had box seats to all the Giants’ games for work. He’s smart and funny and reads all kinds of clever books, and as Kame is starting in on his third drink and Jin is moving on to his fourth, Kame is telling him about how Masato always thought his pitching was sexy and he gave him a baseball bat autographed by Matsui Hideki for his last birthday.  
  
Jin still feels a twinge of weirdness whenever it gets too close to things he doesn’t want to think about. But the drinking helps, and it’s sort of nice to know that they can actually talk like this. Kame is leaning into his shoulder, sprawling a bit in the booth, and the filters seem to be switching off one by one. Which is both a good thing and a bad thing—but mostly a good thing, because Jin can handle it, and Kame seems to need it.  
  
“It’s not like everything was that great, even before,” he says, frowning into his drink. He’s shrugging like it’s no big deal, but Jin knows him better than that. Or at least he used to, and he’d like to think he still does. “We sort of…fought a lot.”  
  
“About what?”  
  
Kame motions vaguely with his half-empty glass. “The usual stuff. Me working too much. Him leaving shit all over the place. He would just  _snap_  at me sometimes, like—I don’t know, a few weeks go by when I’m really busy, and I think everything’s fine, and then suddenly he’s having a fucking fit because I have to move a date from Monday to Tuesday because he says I’m always pushing him around to fit my schedule and I never think about what he wants, and I’m like, ‘Why don’t you tell me these things before you’re completely pissed off about them?’ I mean, I  _get_  why he was pissed, sometimes I get careless about stuff like that, but he just—he would keep things bottled up, and by the time I know we’re even fighting it’s too late for me to fix anything.”  
  
Jin nods a little in sympathy. He’s watching Kame’s face in the blueish light, that weary pull underneath his eyes that’s Kame beating himself up from the inside out, and he wishes there were something he could do to make it better. If he knew the guy at all he could join in more with the slagging off, maybe help Kame blow off some steam, but…he’s really kind of tried not to pay attention to the guys Kame has been with, so that doesn’t help. Maybe a friendly hug, or…more drinks?  
  
“It sounds rough.”  
  
“It wasn’t all bad,” Kame says, taking another deep drink. “The sex was really great.”  
  
Jin feels that unpleasant lurch again. Probably the gin.  
  
“And it was really nice just…having someone to come home to.”  
  
There’s something missing from the end of that sentence—Jin can feel it hanging in the air. When Kame just lets the thought trail off, doesn’t continue, Jin glances over at him again.  
  
“But?”  
  
“But,” Kame acknowledges, “I knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere a long time ago. I probably should have ended it then, I just…I didn’t want to have to start over. Again.”  
  
Kame looks down into his glass, fiddling with his straw in a distracted way and swirling the melty remnants of ice cubes in vodka.  
  
“I don’t even feel that sad, that’s the worst part,” he admits, his voice low like this is the real secret, more than fights or baseball bats or great sex. “I just didn’t care that much—I held onto him for a  _year and a half_  because I was too fucking scared to be alone again. How stupid is that?”  
  
He upends the glass to pour the last few dregs of alcohol down his throat. Then he puts it down on the table and drops his hands into his lap, looking guilty and miserable and maybe also a bit relieved. Jin suddenly wonders if he’s actually told any of this to anyone before. If he has anyone he would tell.  
  
There’s something tight in Jin’s throat as he watches Kame staring at his empty glass. Jin’s shoulder is warm where Kame is leaning against him, and it’s been years since they’ve touched so casually for this long. It’s been years since he’s looked at Kame this way, and he feels a bit like he’s falling asleep and waking up at the same time. It’s the drinks, maybe.  
  
There’s that little twist again though, somewhere inside—less unpleasant than before.  
  
Kame slides down a little in the seat, tucks his head against Jin’s shoulder and closes his eyes. Like it’s just natural. His hair falls in his face a little, and his lips are parted slightly, and he looks young and tired. Lonely for something he gave up on a long time ago.  
  
Jin’s not exactly sure why he does it. Maybe just because there’s a lull in the conversation and he feels cozy, and Kame’s head is resting on his shoulder. Maybe because he’s drunk. He’s totally lost track of time by now, and for all he knows, it could be three years ago.  
  
He leans over and kisses him.  
  
There’s a little pause after the first brush. Jin’s pulse is loud in his ears, and for a second he feels something like panic—but the gin stops it getting all the way in, keeps it off in the distance somewhere. The warmth on his lips though—he feels that. He feels Kame’s little intake of breath, watches his eyes blink and stare, too close to make anything out, and that’s good—it’s better if it’s blurry. Another half a breath, and Kame’s hand slides into his hair, pulling him forward again and now it’s warm and hot and soft, and it’s five years ago, not three, and this never happened but it should have.  
  
Jin’s inside arm is pinned awkwardly between them, but his other hand settles on Kame’s waist, and there’s a little gasp against his tongue, a little squirm against his fingers as Kame tries to shift closer. Kisses him harder. Jin isn’t thinking anymore, and it’s fine—it’s really good. The heat of Kame’s body, and the way he smells, and the way he tastes—it’s all so familiar and yet unfamiliar, and he’s not sure how this can feel like something he remembers until he realizes it was something he imagined over and over, a long time ago.  
  
Somehow Kame gets a knee across Jin’s thighs and shifts until he’s straddling Jin’s lap. The space in the booth is narrow, and the table is bolted to the floor, so it sort of pushes them together, presses Kame up against Jin’s chest, and Jin’s not really sure because everything feels fuzzy, but he thinks he can feel Kame getting hard. He might be a little hard himself.  
  
His hands spread out on Kame’s back as Kame kisses him senseless, and all the other voices just fade away. He thinks about unbuttoning Kame’s jeans and sliding a hand inside, jerking him until he comes right here in Jin’s arms, sliding under the table and taking him into his mouth, opening his own jeans and slipping inside, letting Kame inside, Kame, Kame, Kame. It’s everything he hasn’t thought about in years, and he wants it all at once. And he also wants this. Exactly this, and nothing else. Because this is real. This is what he should have done.  
  
Eventually, after one long, deep kiss that pretty much takes his breath away, Kame pulls back. His fingers are still clenched in Jin’s hair, and Jin keeps his eyes closed, head tilted back against the booth and just breathes, feels Kame everywhere. Tastes what’s left of him in Jin’s mouth.  
  
When eventually he opens his eyes, Kame is looking down at him with a strange, hazy expression. Drunk and fuzzy, with a thoughtful little frown between his brows. And a million miles away.  
  
Jin waits. He waits for Kame to ask. He doesn’t think he’ll know what the answer is until Kame asks.  
  
Kame swallows. “I’m going to the restroom.” he says, and it takes Jin a little while to make sense of the words. “Would you—”  
  
“Okay,” Jin says, blinking a couple of times. “I’ll be here.”  
  
Kame presses his lips together. Nods a little. Like he got his answer somehow, already.  
  
Was there a question?  
  
It’s a little bit clumsy now, all the shifting and squirming, but Kame eventually gets out of the booth. He straightens his t-shirt and disappears into the crowd, headed toward the restrooms. Jin leans forward and takes a sip of his forgotten drink. Shifts awkwardly on the seat and keeps a hand casually placed on his knee at the right angle, just in case the people at the next table over can see something. But they don’t seem to be paying any attention to him anyway. Nobody does. They’re all friends here, and it’s dark and late, and no one is paying attention to anybody else.  
  
His pulse is still sort of thundering, and his body won’t calm down. He keeps sipping at the gin, trying not to think, not to let himself think, and it just keeps coming back to him in waves, what it felt like to have Kame that close, on top of him, kissing him. What it feels like to have Kame. What it  _would_  feel like. He tries not to wonder what’s going to happen, because that’s too much like thinking, and thinking fucks up everything, and this is fucked up enough. He finishes off the gin and orders himself another.  
  
He waits half an hour before he realizes Kame isn’t coming back.  
  
*      *      *


	5. 2010

_Winter_  
  
The doorbell wakes Jin at the ungodly hour of ten a.m.  
  
He tries ignoring it for a while, pulling the pillows and the covers up over his head and burying himself down deep, but it still finds him. Maybe he should just yank the thing out.  
  
Finally he resigns himself to the fact that he’s going to have to kill whoever is at the door first if he ever wants to get back to sleep, so he drags himself out of bed, pulls on a pair of sweatpants, and goes to answer the door.  
  
It’s Pi.  
  
“Hey, you’re not dead.”  
  
“Neither are you,” Jin replies flatly. “Yet.”  
  
“You drank a lot last night,” Pi says. “I called like twenty times, but you didn’t answer.”  
  
“I turned off my phone.”  
  
Pi gives him a reproachful look and stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets. “That’s against the rules and you know it. Friends don’t let friends sleep through alcohol poisoning.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Jin grumbles, wandering away and leaving Pi to invite himself in.  
  
The windows in the kitchen are much too bright. Why don’t they have curtains? He should definitely get curtains. First thing on his list when his head stops feeling like a rock resting on his shoulders: buy curtains.  
  
In the meantime, Jin closes his eyes and puts a hand up to shield his face while he fumbles for the coffee maker and the bag of coffee grounds. Behind him, he hears Pi hop up to sit on the edge of the island counter.  
  
“I saw you making out with Kamenashi last night.”  
  
Jin stops, coffee in mid-scoop. It’s just a dull throb, he’s too hungover for panic or any other strong emotions. Anyway, it’s not a big deal. He’s decided.  
  
“So?”  
  
“So. You want to talk about it?”  
  
“There’s nothing to talk about.”  
  
When Pi says nothing after a few more scoops, Jin reluctantly squints at him over his shoulder, the light from the windows burning his retinas. It’s hard to see anything against that light, but he’d know that skeptical frown anywhere.  
  
“We were drunk, okay?” Jin grumbles, folding the coffee bag away sloppily and filling the carafe from the filtered faucet. “He was lonely and horny and depressed. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”  
  
“Do you have a thing for him?”  
  
Jin glares at him. “I have a girlfriend, Pi.”  
  
“That’s not the question I asked.”  
  
Jin just glares a little more. But the sunlight is so bright, he can’t keep it up for long. Anyway, he has to see if he can remember what order to press the buttons in to make coffee come out of this thing eventually. And put the water in the water compartment. And put the carafe back under the little hole. Can’t forget that part.  
  
By the time the machine starts making noises like it’s working on the coffee situation, Pi still hasn’t said anything more, and Jin is really sort of tempted to push him off the counter and tell him to go away, because he’s making Jin’s headache worse.  
  
“I don’t have a thing for him,” he says, putting the coffee back in the cupboard and flicking a few stray coffee grounds into the sink.  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
“I have a  _girlfriend_ , Pi.”  
  
“You keep saying that.”  
  
“Well you keep asking me the same stupid questions. What do you want me to say?”  
  
While the coffee is busy percolating, Jin turns to the fridge and opens it up. He doesn’t really have any appetite at the moment, but at least the fridge is away from the windows and away from Pi, and it gives him something to do with his hands. He fishes around inside it for a moment or two, finally comes out with a half-empty jug of orange juice. He pulls a glass from the shelf and pours out a little, trying not to splash it all over the counter.  
  
“Look,” Pi says at last, “it’s your business. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. Just… if you ever do. You can, okay? I won’t freak or anything.”  
  
That little throb comes again, harder this time, and Jin slams the glass down on the counter maybe a little more forcefully than intended. “Is that why you’re here?” he snaps. “You just want to make sure I know you’ll be totally cool and understanding about my super-gay love for Kame? Fuck you.”  
  
“Hey, calm down,” Pi says, raising placating hands and looking a little bewildered at Jin’s sudden anger. If Jin’s honest, he doesn’t quite understand it himself. “You think I don’t have gay friends? I’m friends with Kame, for fuck’s sake.”  
  
Jin fiddles with the glass and doesn’t answer. His headache is kind of getting worse. He wishes the coffee would finish.  
  
“I don’t give a shit if you’re into guys or girls or robot sex dolls, okay? That’s not the point. Just…look, it’s fine if I’m wrong, or whatever, but you and Kamenashi… There’s history there. Isn’t there?”  
  
Jin gives half a glance over his shoulder but he can’t quite make it all the way. He turns back to the orange juice.  
  
“And I just thought…maybe you would want to talk about it. That’s all.”  
  
“Well,” Jin mumbles, flicking the glass a little with his middle finger so it slides a few millimeters along the counter. “I don’t.”  
  
“Okay,” Pi says, nodding in the corner of Jin’s vision. “But if you ever do…”  
  
“Yeah. I know,” Jin nods back, fingertip playing with a bead of orange juice he didn’t quite manage to avoid splashing on the counter. “Thank you.”  
  
They drink coffee for a little bit, talk about other things. Pi tells him about Ryo dancing on the tables when “Naniwa Iroha Bushi” came on sometime after he left, and Jin musters a laugh, even though it makes his head hurt. After he’s finished his cup, Pi says he has to get going. Jin sees him to the door, promises to call him when he’s rested and showered and feels like less of a troll. Which will probably be sometime tomorrow, given the way he’s feeling right now. His chest sort of hurts, and he’s not really sure why. It’s a bit hard to breathe. He was fine before Pi got here. Well, hungover and miserable, but basically, yeah, fine.  
  
He pours himself a little more of the coffee, but takes the mug through to his bedroom and crawls back under the covers, blotting out the light.  
  
After a little while he reaches for his phone, brings it under the covers with him and switches it on.  
  
There are a bunch of messages from Pi, mostly emails but also a couple of voicemails telling him to stop being a dick and answer his phone. There’s one from Erin as well, from last night—just telling him she hopes he’s having a good night, asking about plans on Wednesday. He stares at that one for a while. Then he puts the phone back on the nightstand.  
  
It seems like he lies there for hours, but he doesn’t seem to be able to actually sleep. He doesn’t really think either, just sort of stares blankly at the underside of his comforter until his eyes feel prickly and he realizes he’s forgotten to blink.  
  
His phone buzzes sometime around half past three, and he worms a hand out from under the covers to feel around for it. The coffee mug has gone cold by now, still mostly full. His fingers close around the phone and he drags it under the covers with him again, squinting at the brightness when he flicks it on.  
  
It’s a message from Kame. He swipes it open.  
  
 _I’m sorry about last night._  
  
That’s all it says. No emoji, no excuses, no questions. Just an apology.  
  
Jin has questions. Jin has a lot of questions.  
  
It quivers and curls somewhere deep, shaky and threatening, and he tries not to let it sweep him under—tries to put it away. Back where it belongs, a silly sad thing that still makes him feel stupid sometimes, but never lost. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to matter.  
  
He flicks the screen off and curls into himself, burying his face in the pillow again. He’s not sure exactly how much time passes, but he doesn’t think he falls asleep—just goes all blank again. Trying not to ask himself the questions he won’t answer.  
  
Sometime around six, ignoring the little roll in his stomach when he opens his eyes, he flicks his phone on again and types a reply.  
  
 _It’s fine._  
  
*      *      *  
  
She slides a hand down underneath the neck of his t-shirt, just sort of stroking absently, and he wriggles a bit when she gets too near the collarbone. Her thighs are warm and cushy, like a kind of perfect pillow, but he’s learned not to say stuff like that out loud because it tends to get him in trouble. Her phone and newspaper are sitting on the bed next to them, but he thinks he’s doing a pretty good job of distracting her from work now that he’s cut it out with the channel surfing and actually settled on something.  
  
“I just don’t get your fascination with it,” she mutters in a kind of head-shakey tone. “It’s so, I don’t know…blunt and clumsy. Awkward.”  
  
“That’s what makes it cool though,” Jin says, turning his face a little so he can bite her on the knee. “And all the best stuff is in English.”  
  
“All the best stuff is in Japanese,” she corrects him. “All the flashy obnoxious stuff is in English.”  
  
He laughs and rolls all the way onto his stomach, biting her again so that she whacks him on the shoulder.  
  
“Weirdo,” she chuckles.  
  
“Self-hating yank.”  
  
“ _Ex_ -yank, please,” she corrects, and now she’s reaching for her newspaper and pad again. Jin crawls up to the head of the bed to distract her some more, and basically just get in the way of her doing anything productive, because that’s boring.  
  
He leans in for a kiss, and there’s that little chuckle against his lips as she lets him. Opens up with warmth. His fingers slide into her hair and he tilts a little to go deeper, the hum of mindless chatter in the background.  
  
When she reaches for him too, it flickers.  
  
Darker and hotter, hard against his stomach, a huskier breath, wanting…  
  
He feels sort of wobbly all of a sudden, and pushes that out of the way. He’s not thinking of that. That doesn’t belong here, that was just…something. It was nothing.  
  
It’s not important.  
  
“You should come with me,” he murmurs, brushing her hair back a little and staying close. Staying in the way, keeping her focused on him. Keeping focused on her.  
  
“Jin…”  
  
“No, I know,” he says, nibbling at her neck a little, because that tends to keep her warm and receptive. “But it would be different if it were the two of us. You could like it, I promise you. You said you’d never actually been there.”  
  
He feels the sigh. “I haven’t been to the Sahara either, but I know it’s not a great place to get a hot shower and room service.”  
  
“Room service is definitely doable in L.A. They’ve got room service coming out the wazoo. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a room service cart.”  
  
She makes a little muffled noise, somewhere between a growl and a groan.  
  
“You’re too stubborn,” he cajoles, running fingertips lightly up her side. “You should try things more.”  
  
She laughs deeply. “I don’t need to be hearing that from you. Call me the next time you get an offer to give concerts in Paris.”  
  
And that’s…weird too, okay—but whatever, it’s not even that much of a coincidence. Lots of people like Paris. The ripple passes in a moment or two, mostly. It’s not important.  
  
She leans forward again, and this one is deeper than before—this is one of those “to hell with work, I’m not going to get anything else done tonight anyway” kisses. Hot and sort of promising, but lazy too, and shy nibbles at his lower lip and runs his fingers into Jin’s hair as he shifts around in the booth to straddle him—  
  
“What?”  
  
She’s blinking at him a little bit hazily, and he can’t blame her for being puzzled. He pulled away kind of suddenly.  
  
“I—”  
  
He starts it, but he really doesn’t know where he’s going. It’s already fading on him again, and it’s stupid to be letting it get to him so much. All that was over ages ago, and it was confusing enough the first time, and there is really absolutely no reason for him to put himself through that again just because of one stupid lapse into…nostalgia. Or whatever.  
  
“Is something wrong?”  
  
There’s a little twitch between her brows, like she’s actually maybe sort of worried about him.  
  
 _There was this thing that happened the other day…you know, that night I was out with the guys…_  
  
 _You’ll never believe what happened the other night—oh my god, we must have been seriously wasted, because…_  
  
 _I’m sorry. It wasn’t a big deal, I swear, and it really didn’t mean anything, it was just one of those…things. You know?_  
  
 _I’m not even into guys anymore…_  
  
It’s hard to explain.  
  
She brushes a thumb over his cheek to wake him up from where he’s disappeared to.  
  
Jin blinks a couple of times and shakes it off, with a belated smile.  
  
“Hey,” she says, brushing a little of his hair back from his face and curling fingers around the back of his neck. “Look, I’m sorry I can’t go with you—but you’ll have more fun without me, trust me. Go, enjoy your flashy obnoxious English and sing great songs and be amazing. Just come back to me.”  
  
He can’t explain.  
  
So he smiles instead, and leans into her caress a little bit, and just lets it settle into the background again. It will stay there eventually.  
  
“I will.”  
  
*      *      *  
  
Jin is late, and Ueda is fucking up the transition from the verse again. He can hear it playing over and over from all the way down the hall.  
  
When he pushes through into the dance studio, only Taguchi and Ueda are up and moving. Nakamaru is manning the stereo for them while Taguchi coaches him through the tricky part. Koki is on his phone over in the corner furthest from the speakers. Kame is standing off to the side watching with a concentrated little frown between his brows, but he’s not saying anything, and he doesn’t look like he’s going to. He looks up when Jin walks into the room.  
  
Jin doesn’t look away. He feels a little jittery and it’s tempting, but he’s decided not to let it get to him and it won’t. It’ll pass. There’s maybe a beat before Kame smiles, but when he does it seems fine.   
  
Not fake, not uneasy. Just fine. Maybe even a little relieved.  
  
And Jin really doesn’t get why that makes his stomach twist again, that little swoop and stumble, because that’s exactly the way it’s supposed to be. It’s exactly what he expected. He feels a self-conscious prickle underneath his skin, and that’s stupid—so he turns away, busying himself with his bag in the corner, getting out his hand towel, checking and double-checking the lid of his water bottle.  
  
He’s so busy looking busy that he doesn’t actually hear Kame walking up to him until the movement in the mirror catches his eye, and Kame is right there next to him. Much too close. Jin backs away, trying not to look it.  
  
“Hey,” Kame says. “Sorry, I just wanted to make sure you’re—I mean, I know you got my message, but I thought maybe we should—”  
  
“We’re cool,” Jin says, shaking his head and ducking his chin. Checking his water bottle lid one more time. “Totally fine. Don’t worry about it.”  
  
Kame watches him for a moment. Then he nods. “Okay. Well, good. I mean, I just wouldn’t want it to—”  
  
“It won’t,” Jin shakes his head again. “Seriously, all is good.”  
  
When Kame just looks at him for a little while longer, Jin can’t help looking away—eyes like fucking lasers, seriously, what is it with this guy. Everything is  _fine_.  
  
Kame opens his mouth to say something else, but then Nakamaru calls out to Jin and Jin just goes. Something about the stereo connection to the speakers, the sound keeps flickering and cutting out randomly. Jin doesn’t have a fucking clue how to fix it, but at least it gives him something to do with his hands, fiddling with the little nest of wires, checking for loose connections. Something useful. It makes it easier to shrug the weight off his shoulders, even easier when he pulls his hair up out of his eyes and gives Kame a little smile when he catches him staring again, gets ready to work.  
  
Everything’s fine.  
  
*      *      *  
  
The evening news is mumbling in the background, and Jin is sitting on the floor with his computer open on the coffee table, a lead sheet staring him in the face. He’s supposed to be writing chord progressions, but that isn’t where his head is right now. His head is where it’s been for three weeks now, stuck in a dark corner with arms and lips and teeth, and a hard weight…  
  
“Jin?”  
  
Erin’s voice tugs him back to the blank page and the traffic reports, the sounds of cupboards opening and closing in the kitchen. He clears his throat.  
  
“Yeah?” he calls back. It still catches a little at the sides.  
  
“Where did you put my herbal tea?”  
  
Jin tries to remember what she’s talking about. What tea, what… “I don’t know—is it with the coffee?”  
  
“No, I tried that one, I just thought—no, wait, maybe I left it with the stuff to take back to my place…”  
  
He hears her rummaging in one of the grocery bags. Glances over at the dining table, which is all covered in her computer and her notepads, her briefcase sitting open on the chair, and he feels guilty again. And stupid, because…yeah.  
  
This is real. That was a mistake.  
  
He blinks again when she appears, setting a mug down next to her computer and folding herself into the dining chair again. “Found it?” he asks as she dips the teabag up and down a bit by the string.  
  
“Under the profiteroles.” She smiles. “Always the last place you look, right?”  
  
*      *      *  
  
 _Spring_  
  
Kurosawa-san always has some kind of snack on her desk to welcome prominent guests—chocolates or monja, sometimes these weird little biscuit things that kind of look like chunks of stale bread (and taste like it too, he avoids those ones), a colorful arrangement of fruit. Today it’s doughnuts of assorted shapes and sizes. He couldn’t grab one on the way in because then he’d have powdered sugar all down his front throughout the meeting (which kind of sucks when you’re talking to the guy who controls your entire livelihood)—but now he has at least an hour before his next meeting, and if she would just stay focused on that expense report for a moment…  
  
“Hey.”  
  
Jin snatches his hand back from the plate and tries not to look guilty. Kame gives him a curious look that tells him he didn’t quite manage that—and then Kame’s eyes flick to the plate, and go all “ahhh.”  
  
Jin jams his hands in his pockets and sways back on his heels a little bit. Kurosawa-san is still focused on her work—he could take one now, Kame wouldn’t tell. It was Kame’s idea, the first time they did it. But somehow Jin isn’t really in the mood to be sneaky anymore, even if Kame is the only one who knows.  
  
“I didn’t expect to run into you here,” he says.  
  
“Yeah. Well,” Kame says, nodding toward the hallway and looking a little awkward. “Meeting, you know. Tour stuff.”  
  
Oh. Oh…right. Of course. “Yeah. Yeah, of course, um—how is that all…going?”  
  
Kame gives him a little smile. “It’s going. Will be better when you’re back though.”  
  
Jin nods a little, but he doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t know what to say at all.  
  
Fuck, this used to be easier. It’s only been a few weeks since they’ve seen each other, but it feels like longer already, and he didn’t know what to say then either. And a few weeks before that…  
  
Yeah, nope. That doesn’t help.  
  
“Hey,” Kame says again, and it’s not until then that Jin notices his face has gone all serious and concerned, like he’s been reading Jin’s thoughts printing themselves across his forehead. “Listen, can we talk for a sec?”  
  
Jin swallows. He wants to say no. He wants to say no and just leave, get on with his day and not worry about this right now. Deal with it later. If six weeks or whatever isn’t enough, maybe seven will be, there’s no rush. Not like it’s going to matter much for a while.  
  
But Kame is still looking at him all intently, and Jin feels like a jerk just blowing him off when he doesn’t actually have to. “Um—yeah, sure. For a minute—I have to get to another meeting soon though.”  
  
“Sure, of course—it’ll only take a minute.”  
  
Kame leads the way back down the hall, glancing in windows until they find an empty office. He lets Jin pass, then closes the door behind them. There’s a bunch of extra furniture being stored inside and the light switch doesn’t even work properly, so they end up standing there in the half-gloom, between the empty desk and a rack of folding chairs.  
  
“Look,” Kame says, turning toward him all straightforward. His voice is lowered just a little, but he looks more like he’s worried about Jin hearing him than about anyone outside. “I know you’re still feeling awkward about what happened, and I’m really sorry about that—it was my mistake, I let it get out of hand. I just—I really want us to be okay.”  
  
The longer he looks at Jin, the harder Jin finds it to look back at him. It’s too dark in here, it feels weird—sort of creepy with the bare walls and the unplugged lamp and the empty bookcase. And something else, like it’s too…secret. Too private.  
  
Too many dark corners.  
  
“Especially with—you know, with your concerts and everything. I really don’t want this to fuck up our working relationship.”  
  
The words sound like lead, a little practical, a little cold.  
  
Something roils in Jin’s stomach, strange and uncomfortable and not really new, but he doesn’t get  _why_. He really needs to get out of here. Right now. He’s got three more appointments this afternoon, and an hour isn’t that long come to think of it, and he really just can’t do this right now.  
  
They’re fine. He should just say they’re fine.  
  
“Why do you always talk like that?” Jin says.  
  
Kame blinks at him, taken aback. “Talk like what?”  
  
“‘Our working relationship.’ We used to be friends—who the fuck cares about our working relationship?”  
  
It’s bitter. Jin doesn’t even know where it’s coming from, and Kame seems totally confused.  
  
“What are you talking about—we are friends.”  
  
“No we’re  _not_. Friends don’t—”  
  
Crazy. Fucking  _crazy_ , hot and hard and it shoots through his mind again, through his body like it hasn’t in weeks. How much he wanted it. How bad it sucked when Kame just  _disappeared_. It crawls under his skin and makes him feel embarrassed and alone, and Kame doesn’t even  _care_. It doesn’t bother him at all.  
  
And Jin can’t say that.  
  
“I have to go,” he says instead, and heads for the door—but Kame is closer, quicker, and his hand burns over Jin’s on the door handle.  
  
“Jin, wait—I seriously don’t get this. I don’t know what you want from me.”  
  
Jin stares at him for a long moment, and his mouth goes dry. So close. So damn close.  
  
 _I don’t know either._  
  
“I want you to back off,” he says. Even to him it sounds cold.  
  
When Jin pulls hard at the door handle again, Kame’s hand disappears and he steps aside quickly. Jin doesn’t look back at him as he walks away.  
  
*      *      *  
  
 _Summer_  
  
It’s been all over the news since morning.

  
Jin woke up to it, actually, which was kind of a shock over jetlag and coffee and last night’s pizza. Not like he didn’t know it was coming, but it didn’t seem quite so real until he actually saw them standing there, cameras flashing, telling everyone why it’s fine. Why they’ll be fine. Why they don’t need him.  
  
The phone started ringing off the hook before the news report was even over. He answered the first few times, gave brief mumbled statements without really thinking—but then he stopped that, because he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say, and he’s probably not saying anything that makes sense now anyway. He turned off the phone, but he left the TV on, because he couldn’t quite turn that off.  
  
The press conference from the first time keeps showing up over and over, and for some reason also this random clip from the concerts last year where he and Kame are flying around on wires, like…like what? Now the puppet’s cut his own strings, let’s see if he plummets to his death?  
  
He checks his cell sometimes. But every time he turns it on again there are another hundred messages and he turns it right back off. He doesn’t want to deal with them, doesn’t get why he should have to deal with them, it’s his fucking life, why do they all care all of a sudden? Will they still care when the fervor all dies down, and he doesn’t crash and burn, and it’s only him, doing what he does?  
  
Also, he’s a coward.  
  
He was going to restock the fridge this afternoon, but errands are out of the question now, so he orders in more takeout. Breaks out the bottle of scotch around four-thirty when the nerves start getting to him and he has to return a call from the agency talking about next steps, instructions for engaging the press. Some kind of strategy meeting scheduled for tomorrow where they’ll tell him how he’s supposed to feel about all this. What he’s supposed to say. What he must never say.  
  
The scotch burns all the way down, but it’s better than the alternative.  
  
By evening, he’s got his feet pulled up on the couch and his forehead resting in his hands. He’s been watching game shows for the last three hours, but now the late news is on again, and there it is. Kame’s voice. Confident and sure, and who knows, maybe Jin’s the only one who hears the wobble.  
  
The knock gives him a jolt.  
  
He glances up and around—takes a moment to focus on the door, realize that’s where it came from. The nearly-empty scotch bottle clanks against the empty beers as he rolls up to his feet and walks over, slides back the chain. His fingers fumble for the handle and the door pulls open, and it’s Kame.  
  
He looks less tidy than he did on TV twelve hours ago, and every hour after that on an infinite loop. His hair looks like it’s had fingers in it all day, and his eyes look sort of tired. They look straight at Jin too, and Jin really, really wishes they would stop.   
  
“So you are in the country then,” Kame says. His voice is even, and that goddamn poker face. Jin wishes he would yell. It would be better if he yelled.  
  
“I…” he starts.  
  
But he doesn’t know what to say. His brain is too slow, too heavy. There’s too much to say, and there’s nothing.  
  
Finally Kame glances down and away, a little twitch of a wry smile. “Sorry,” he says. “I know I probably should have called first, I don’t want to…intrude. But I was in the neighborhood, and…”  
  
“No,” Jin says, shaking his head. It doesn’t help much with clearing it. “No, it’s fine—I turned the phone off hours ago anyway.”  
  
There’s a little bit of a smile again, and Kame’s eyes flick back up to his face. Study it. Jin can’t look back.  
  
“Do you want to come in?” he asks belatedly, stepping aside, stumbling a bit over a stray sneaker.  
  
Kame follows him into the living room, hands in his pockets. Jin watches him from behind as he glances around the room—it probably doesn’t look that much different from the last time he was here, but now that Jin’s doing the math that was kind of a while ago.  
  
There were beers and TV then too, and talking about nothing. Shoulders touching, feeling comfortable. Feeling close.  
  
It’s weird how he hasn’t really missed that in such a long time, hasn’t even realized it was missing in the first place. It’s weird how much he misses it now, when they’re standing right here, and there are more beers in the fridge, and there’s nothing really standing between them and the couch except a lot of years. And an ending.  
  
Kame looks at him again, and Jin gets the feeling that he’s being studied, like Kame is trying to slot every detail into place. Give it all a sense of order. And Jin gets this weird urge not to let that happen, to keep messing shit up so it will never be neat and tidy, never make complete sense. So Kame will always have to come back and figure it out.  
  
That’s stupid though. Kame’s not the one who’s leaving.  
  
“I’m sorry you found out that way,” Jin blurts out, when the silence has gone on a bit too long. “They…I just got back yesterday, and I’ve been sleeping, and I didn’t realize— They didn’t tell me they were going to do it like that. You know, right away. I thought I had more time.”  
  
There’s another little smile, and this one almost seems real. “Hey. Par for the course, right? I’m used to the way they work.”  
  
Yeah. Par for the course.  
  
Jin’s never gotten used to it. It’s a new learning curve every time, a whole new set of surprises and disappointments and mistakes.  
  
“I know, I just…I’m still sorry,” Jin says again.  
  
Kame looks at him like he knows all the things Jin is sorry about. And it’s weird, because Jin is sure that he doesn’t know the half of them.  
  
“When do you head back to California?” Kame asks, wandering a little further into the room. Jin notices his eyes sweep over the liquor bottles on the couch, but he doesn’t comment. He doesn’t take a seat either.  
  
“A week from Tuesday,” Jin says. “Meetings and stuff. Checking out some venues maybe.”  
  
Kame nods, his gaze lingering for a moment on the corner table with all the old photographs pressed between the wood and the glass. There’s stuff on the table, so who knows what he can see there, but at least a few of the faces are his.  
  
“How about you? What’s your next stop?”  
  
“Korea,” Kame says, tearing his eyes away from the table and giving Jin another rueful smile. “Not till August though.”  
  
Jin nods. And really tries not to feel left out, because he knows that isn’t fair. He chose this. Maybe not the way he would have wanted, but he chose it.  
  
“Sounds like that’ll be fun,” he tries.  
  
Kame looks at him, and Jin knows. Kame doesn’t have to say it, Jin already knows.  
  
 _It would be more fun with you._  
  
Fuck.  
  
This sucks. It really sucks. He wishes it could be five years in the future already so he could think back on all this and know it was all worth it—or better yet, five years in the past, so he could do it all again and maybe not make so many mistakes. Or make different ones. Better ones.  
  
“I should probably get going,” Kame says, glancing down again. “It’s late—I’ve got meetings in the morning.”  
  
It’s not meant to be a guilt trip, but Jin feels a little bit guilty anyway.  
  
He walks Kame over to the door and watches as he steps into his shoes. When he straightens up again, Kame gives him another little smile, another look that goes strangely deep, like he wants to say something more but he’s not sure how to put it into words. Or maybe there just aren’t any.  
  
Finally he puts out a hand. Very grown up, very American. Very proper, totally wrong, and Jin thinks  _fuck that_  and pulls Kame into a hug.  
  
Kame stumbles a little against him, stiff in Jin’s arms, but Jin doesn’t give a shit—just hangs onto him, squeezes his shoulders tighter and buries his face in the crook of Kame’s neck. He’s kind of drunk and Erin’s got a key, and it’s been ages since this was normal, and there was that one night, and Jin just doesn’t give a shit.  
  
After a few moments, Kame’s arms come up around him too, palms flat against his back. Sort of careful at first. But then they curl tighter, and his fingers twist in the back of Jin’s shirt, and he presses his face into Jin’s shoulder and lets out a shaky breath. It tickles Jin’s collarbone with its warmth, but he doesn’t flinch, and he doesn’t let go.  
  
He needs to say something. He wants to say something.  
  
“Good luck,” Kame says, and it’s a low murmur in his ear, like they’re thousands of miles apart already.  
  
Jin opens his mouth to say thank you, to say good luck, to say goodbye.  
  
But then Kame slides out of his arms, and Jin still hasn’t said anything. And he still can’t make a sound when Kame finally turns away.  
  
*      *      *


	6. 2010

_Summer_  
  
It doesn’t swelter here like it does in Tokyo.  
  
The sun shines brightly over brick and pavement, and there are cars and snatches of music as they pass with their windows open, slivers of laughter and conversation. The air is warm, but the breeze never lets up enough to make it hot, and from somewhere just beyond the next row of buildings he can smell the sea. Even the sea is different here. Broader somehow. Open to the sky.  
  
Jin perches his sunglasses on top of his head as he pushes his way into the Starbucks on the corner. It’s just after lunch, so the line is kind of crazy, everybody looking for an afternoon pick-me-up before they head back to the office or their afternoon classes or the beach. But it’s cool, he’s done for the day—no more meetings until tomorrow, and even that one is in the afternoon.  
  
He pulls out his phone and flicks through stuff while he waits. Checks email, checks twitter. Flips through the headlines on the news app he finally downloaded to get Erin to stop looking at him like some poor sad puppy whenever she talks about some big thing that happened somewhere that he doesn’t know about. He reads about half of an article about the U.S. federal minimum wage to the sound of the milk steamer before he gets stuck in a loop on some paragraph talking about spending power at the bottom of the pyramid and how it drives the economy, and then he switches over to Angry Birds.  
  
It’s 5 a.m. in Tokyo right now—Erin will probably be asleep. But no, that’s right, she’s at a conference in Hong Kong this week, so that makes it…what, like two hours earlier? 3 a.m. Not a good time to call, and anyway she’s probably got meetings all day. It’s cool though, he’ll speak to her on the weekend. They set up a schedule.  
  
Must be 5 a.m. in Seoul though, too.  
  
There’s a clatter of plastic on the tile floor, and Jin glances toward a table by the window on the other side of the seating area, past the little island with the napkins and the plastic straws. There’s a little girl with blond ringlets kneeling on her chair and reaching down to pick up the nearly-empty frappuccino cup she dropped, and just as she’s definitely about to topple over the guy sitting next to her scoops her up and rights her again. Leans down to pick up the frappuccino with one hand and grabs a napkin from the pile on the table with the other. He’s got sandy hair too, and he’s nodding at whatever the boy across from him is saying while he wipes off the cup. The girl bounces and reaches until he gives it back to her, and when he does, he grins and flicks a couple of ringlets out of her eyes. Jin can’t hear what he’s saying to her, but it makes her bounce again.  
  
The guy behind him in line clears his throat, and Jin realizes he’s next up.  
  
He orders his venti caramel macchiato and gets shuffled around to the other side of the counter to  wait. It takes a good ten minutes before they get to him, passing out lattes and double espressos by the dozen. By the time he’s got his drink and wanders back out to the seating area to find a place to chill for a while, the table over by the window is empty, still covered in crumpled napkins and sticky fingerprints.  
  
Jin fingers his phone in his pocket for a moment, glancing around at the sea of chairs and tables, nowhere really empty or clean. It’s 5 a.m. in Tokyo and 3 a.m. in Hong Kong and it’s 1 p.m. here, and maybe Dom is around. Maybe he’ll want to hang out or something.  
  
There’s really nowhere to sit here anyway, so he heads straight on to the door, pushes his way out to enjoy the sunshine.  
  
*      *      *  
  
“So what are you wearing?” Jin says, putting on his best purr for the phone.  
  
“Hmm…” she murmurs back. “Jeans? Those ones you wouldn’t let me throw out, with the hole in the knee.”  
  
“What else?”  
  
“…nothing,” she replies, her voice dipping low and sexy the way she knows he likes.  
  
Jin laughs, even as the mental picture sends a little prickle down his spine. “You’re totally lying, aren’t you.”  
  
“Do you really want me to answer that?”  
  
Jin hesitates, and she chuckles.  
  
“I didn’t think so.”  
  
Her voice sounds so close and warm, and he keeps picturing her wandering around her apartment in just those worn out old jeans without even a bra, and then he reaches down and presses his palm against it just a little, and—yeah, he’s definitely feeling that.  
  
“So…you want to?” he asks.  
  
She hums a little deeper. “Sure. Let me just get these jeans off.”  
  
Jin groans.  
  
*      *      *  
  
The room is a jumble of light and shadow, and the beat pounds through the soles of his shoes with every step. God, fuck, he loves the feeling, loves the energy, the space and the crowd. He’s missed this too much.  
  
A girl with a blond ponytail and three earrings in her left ear mixes his drink and passes it to him across the bar. He drops his change in the tip glass and twists around, leaning back on one elbow to watch the dancing crowd and let the drink find its way into his veins for a while.  
  
The guys were all busy tonight—Josh is back in Tokyo and Dom had a rehearsal, the others all had work in the morning or kids to put on school buses or don’t live here anymore. But whatever, Jin’s not some loser who doesn’t know how to make his own fun. He wanted to drink and party tonight and he’s going to do it and nobody is going to stop him.  
  
He checks his phone just in case he’s missed something since he got in here—sometimes he forgets to put it on vibrate, and it’s impossible to hear it in a place like this—but there’s nothing, which is cool. It’s like noon there, she’s probably at work. Anyway, she said she needed “time to think” and that probably means more than like twelve hours.  
  
Whatever.  
  
He downs the rest of his drink and orders another.  
  
The music is really starting to feel good now, starting to feel easy. He’s got a little bit of a buzz going in his fingertips, and it makes him itch to move, to reach out and touch. A couple of women walk by in tight skirts, one blonde and another dark with her hair all in tiny twists, and Jin follows them with his eyes until they disappear into the bumping, grinding mass.  
  
He squeezes the lime into his gin and tonic, drops it in and pokes at it with his straw a couple times before taking another sip, feeling it cool and sticky all the way down his throat.  
  
Nice.  
  
He watches. Watches men sidle up to women and press up against them from behind. Watches women lift their arms over their heads and wriggle into the embrace, drop their heads back when a hand slides up to cup a heavy breast. Reach back to clutch a hip, clutch a thigh, clutch something in between.  
  
The second drink doesn’t last long, and soon he’s on a third.  
  
When he turns away from the bartender again, he catches someone watching him from the other end of the bar. The guy looks away as soon as Jin notices, but Jin is sure he saw. He keeps staring, and after a few moments the guy’s eyes come back, and it’s an old feeling. A very old feeling.  
  
Jin looks away quickly. Takes a deep sip of his drink and watches the girls, watches them twist and grind and laugh and disappear into the dark.  
  
His phone buzzes against his hip, and he reaches in to pull it out. The message is from Josh, not Erin, asking which club he ended up at, whether it’s the one that had all the ice sculptures when they were there at New Year’s that one time. Jin can’t be fucked to give a reply.  
  
*      *      *  
  
“So what are you wearing?”  
  
It comes back as kind of a stiff laugh. “Jin, I don’t have time for this right now.”  
  
“What do you mean you don’t have time—we have a  _schedule_ ,” Jin pouts, just a little. “I’m just asking what you’re wearing. You can tell me, and then I’ll do all the work.”  
  
“Well, you’d have to, wouldn’t you.”  
  
Jin rolls his eyes at that. But she still doesn’t seem interested in playing along, so whatever. Maybe next week. “Fine,” he mumbles, with a little bit of a sigh.  
  
“Jin, we talked about this…”  
  
“I’m not,” Jin says, trying not to sound annoyed, but it’s hard when she takes that tone with him. It’s like a reflex whenever he hears it, just makes him want to kick at things even though he knows it won’t help. “I said it was fine, no arguments.”  
  
“Sorry,” she says, and he can hear a bit of how tired she really is in that. That makes it less annoying. “I just— I really have to get this article finished. I have to be in Osaka tomorrow morning, and you know I can’t write on the train.”  
  
“Yeah, I know,” Jin says, picking at a loose thread on one of the couch cushions. “What’s it about?”  
  
“The fluctuation of the yen in comparison to the Chinese yuan and how it impacts the new trade agreement.”  
  
“Wow. That sounds…”  
  
“Boring?”  
  
“…No?”  
  
She huffs a laugh again, and he hears what sounds like her taking a sip of coffee. Or maybe hot chocolate or something, she doesn’t usually drink coffee that late. “Seriously though, Jin, I need to get this done—it’s been a crazy week. Can we talk when you get back?”  
  
“Sure,” he nods. “Yeah, no problem.”  
  
After they hang up, Jin stays where he is on the couch for a while, turning the phone end over end between his fingers and staring up at the ceiling. He’s still feeling a tiny bit horny, but not enough that it wouldn’t take some doing, and he’s not sure he really wants to do anything about it. Not alone, anyway.  
  
He glances at the phone.  
  
Then he puts it back in his pocket.  
  
*      *      *  
  
 _Fall_  
  
A bunch of bananas, two pounds of thinly sliced pork, and a pack of cigarettes. The man behind the checkout counter scans them each efficiently and bows to Jin a little as he takes the cash with both hands. It’s not slower or faster, it’s not better or worse—it’s just different. Somehow more normal, and also more strange.  
  
He misses the sunshine though. It’s been raining for almost the whole two weeks he’s been back in Tokyo—this morning it finally stopped enough that he thought he could fit in a few errands, but he still has to hunch down a little under his hood as he steps back out onto the sidewalk. He won’t be totally soaked by the time he gets home—it’s only a block and a half—but he won’t be totally dry either. It’s a little cooler now than a couple of months ago, but the rain makes it no less sticky.  
  
He swipes his keychain in front of the key reader and the door opens, lets him through to the little elevator lobby. At least there’s no one in the elevator with him so he can shake off a little. A cigarette would be nice, but he tries not to smoke them in the apartment anymore because Erin doesn’t like the smell. He’ll have to wait until the rain lets up again.  
  
There’s sound in the room when he unlocks the door, and for a moment he kind of panics—but then he sees her sitting on the couch in a pair of his sweatpants and a Verdy t-shirt with her hair wrapped up in a towel and a bowl of Jin’s mother’s leftovers on her lap.  
  
“Hey,” he says, suddenly feeling much less annoyed with the rain as he steps out of his wet shoes and drops his jacket on the hook. “What are you doing here? When did you get in?”  
  
“About two hours ago,” she says, smiling back at him as he comes to sit on the coffee table in front of her, diverting her attention from the news. “They canceled today’s sessions, so I came home early. Thought I would surprise you. Here, you have to try this chicken, it’s amazing.”  
  
She holds out the chopsticks for him, and he leans in to accept the bite—dipping his tongue between them maybe a little bit sexily.  
  
Her smile turns sideways.  
  
“Mmm,” Jin hums, licking his lips and swallowing it down. “That is really good chicken.”  
  
“Isn’t it though?” Erin says, not taking her eyes off him. “I thought you’d like it.”  
  
“I love it,” Jin says.  
  
“Want more?”  
  
“Nah,” he says, taking the bowl out of her hands and putting it down on the coffee table behind him, “I think I’m hungry for something else.”  
  
And then he tackles her laughing onto the couch.  
  
*      *      *  
  
It seems like it’s been ages since they spent an afternoon like this—just sex and talking, always touching. Nobody stressed, everybody on the same continent. Everything easy—everything hot, god she’s hot when she wraps her legs around his waist like that and twists her fingers in his hair, makes those sounds. That part was always good. That part has always been good. They did it once on the couch and then another time on the floor, and now they’re curled up in bed, the sunlight fading to a deep purple in the window, and Jin really doesn’t feel like getting up again. He wants it to stay just like this.  
  
“Shit,” he mumbles into her shoulder, with a little huff of breath. “I need to finish packing.”  
  
She laughs sleepily. “Packing for what?”  
  
“My flight is in like…fuck, like twelve hours or something. I haven’t even finished cleaning out all the stuff from the last time.”  
  
Erin goes very still. Jin doesn’t really even notice it until her fingers slip out of his hair and she doesn’t say anything, and he gets this irritatingly familiar feeling of dread.  
  
No. It was so good. Why the fuck now?  
  
“You’re going back again?” she says, in a voice that doesn’t quite manage to sound casual. “Already?”  
  
Jin lets out a long breath and doesn’t open his eyes. Maybe if he keeps his eyes closed it will just blow over. “Yeah. I told you I had to be back by the fifteenth. Tomorrow is the fifteenth.”  
  
“You didn’t tell me that.”  
  
“Yes I  _did_.”  
  
It’s getting to him now, no matter how he tries not to let it. The relaxed mood is crawling with old grievances, and not only hers. When she slides out from beside him, he doesn’t try to keep her, just rolls onto his back and reluctantly opens his eyes. She’s tugging a t-shirt over her head.  
  
“Where are you going?”  
  
“I’m going to the bathroom,” she says shortly. And then she shuts herself in.  
  
Jin rubs his hands over his face and glances over at the nightstand. 7:42 p.m.  
  
He really does have to pack.  
  
His limbs feel like jelly when he crawls out from under the covers, a few muscles reminding him of earlier and he tries not to feel bitter about that. It was great. It was really awesome sex, and it felt good being close for a while, and if they’re back to the status quo now, fuck it. At least they had that. And they’ll have it again the next time he gets back. It’s fine.  
  
He pulls on a pair of sweats and gets his half-full duffel bag from the chair where he’s left it, starts emptying the rest out onto the bed and trying to sort the stuff that’s still usable from the stuff that really needs a wash. He hears the shower turn on after a few minutes—he’ll have to deal with the toiletries after she’s done—and starts pulling fresh clothes out of his closet, stuffing a few into the bag, trying to decide which shoes he wants for the plane, remembering that album he bought for Dom the other day when he was in Shibuya. It’s another two months this time, and the weather is getting colder—he might need a second bag.  
  
When she comes out again, she’s dressed in her own jeans and buttondown. She doesn’t look at him as she passes through the room, rubbing at her hair with a towel and heading straight for the door. Jin watches her disappear out into the living room, listens to her bare feet on the wood, and tries to decide if he wants to go talk to her or just stay here and keep packing. When he spends five minutes trying to decide between two black t-shirts, he finally balls them up and stuffs both of them into the bag, and then he stomps out of the room.  
  
He finds her in the kitchen making herself a cup of tea. The towel is wrapped loosely around her hair now, but somehow it doesn’t look sexy like it did earlier, it just pisses him off. Even the way she stands there, one hip leaning against the counter and her eyes on the teacup as she wraps the teabag around a spoon, pisses him off.  
  
“What is your problem?” he says.  
  
She doesn’t look up, just tugs a little on the string to squeeze the last few drops from the teabag and then drops it in an empty bowl nearby. “You know what my problem is.”  
  
“I told you I was going back, Erin.”  
  
“You didn’t.”  
  
“Yes I did!” He walks over and smacks a hand against the refrigerator door. “I even put it on the fucking calendar on the fucking fridge like you told me to.”  
  
“Well that’s not any good to me if you’re never here, is it,” she snaps back. Not so interested in the tea anymore, but hey, at least they’re not pretending. “What, do you think I just come over here and hang around your apartment when you’re gone, waiting for you to come back? I have a life, Jin.”  
  
“Great, so do I.”  
  
“But yours is in fucking California.”  
  
That’s  _so unfair_.  
  
“I was here for  _two whole weeks_ ,” he points out. “You were in Shanghai.”  
  
“Yeah, and you were gone for  _two months_  before that.”  
  
Jin turns away, clawing fingers through his hair. God, he’s so tired of this same damn argument. She just doesn’t get it.  
  
“This is my career, Erin,” he grits out. “Okay? This is what I do—this is what I’ve done since I was  _fourteen_ , and you knew that— and anyway, I asked you to come with me.”  
  
She crosses her arms over her chest. “You think you’re the only one with a career?”  
  
God, he  _hates_  that look, like she’s scolding a helpless twelve year old. It really makes him nuts.  
  
“And you think you’re the only one whose career is actually important,” he spits back, and doesn’t give a fuck, because it’s true.  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous.”  
  
“ _Don’t_  tell me I’m being ridiculous. I’ve asked you to marry me like four times and you keep saying you want to wait because of  _your_ _career_. Do you have any idea what it would do to  _my_  career to marry you? But you know what, that’s worth it to me—”  
  
“And I’m supposed to be flattered by that?” she says. “I’m supposed to give up everything I care about just because you’re willing to take heat from the tabloids?”  
  
“I’m not asking you to give up anything!”  
  
“Bullshit,” she snaps. “If you had your way I’d have 2.5 kids and be living in fucking California right now.”  
  
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”  
  
“You live like a  _child_ , Jin,” she says, and her eyes are angry, but her voice is shaking. Jin is shaking too, and he’s not sure if it’s anger or the way it stings. “You go wherever you want and you do whatever you want, and fuck what anybody else thinks. And I am not going to be some prop who just brings you more children to play with.”  
  
“What the  _fuck_ —”  
  
“Anyway, you’re never around. I don’t want to raise kids with a man who’s gone half the time—I’m sorry, that is not the life I signed up for.”  
  
“But if you would just come with me sometimes—”  
  
“I live in  _Japan_ , Jin,” she says, frustrated. Like she thinks he can’t hear her,  _won’t_  hear her. “I moved away from the U.S. because I wanted to live in Japan. I put up with visa renewals and bullshit from men who don’t know what century it is every day because I want to live in Japan. I’m in a relationship with a Japanese guy because  _I want to live in Japan_. And I am not going to give up a life that _matters_  to me to spend half my time chasing you around the world like some kind of sad groupie. That’s not what I want.”  
  
“Well, then, maybe you don’t want me,” Jin snaps.  
  
But even as he says it, he feels it like a lead weight slipping into his stomach. Dragging the walls down with it, slowly, until everything is bare and still.  
  
It’s the way the fight goes out of her as she looks back at him, the way she sort of empties before his eyes, that makes it not a surprise.  
  
“Maybe I don’t.”  
  
For a crazy moment he wants to take it back. Take it all back, everything he said, everything he felt, everything he made her say. He wants to say he’s sorry, promise it will be better. Promise her he’ll stay, promise her anything if she’ll stay. He wants to go back to the bedroom and the t-shirts and just not walk out here, just leave it in silence and call her in a week when he’s far away and it’s safe and they’re both in different places but they won’t be forever. She looks like maybe she wishes she could take stuff back too. Maybe that’s all it would take to keep it going a little while longer.  
  
But he can’t.  
  
The same old shit keeps coming up again and again, and they make their peace each time, but the facts never change. He could take it back, and she could take it back, but that wouldn’t make it less true.  
  
She doesn’t want what he wants. If she did, they would have it by now.  
  
“I don’t think this is working, Jin,” Erin says, with only a little bit of a quiver in her voice. She was always more grown up about these things than he was. He used to love that.  
  
Jin stares at the calendar on the fridge door, her neat scribbled kanji and his loopy English letters, the little sparks of anger and frustration giving way to something else prickling underneath his skin. He doesn’t say a word.  
  
*      *      *  
  
There’s music everywhere, dark and light, pounding in his ribcage and pressing on his skull. It feels good—it  _feels_ —and Jin tilts a little with the force of it, leans too heavy on the railing as he squeezes his way down to the main floor. The ceiling is lower than at the other clubs, the feeling closer, rawer, harder to hide from. He doesn’t need another drink, but he goes to the bar anyway, just to have something to hold onto. The guy who takes his order has short reddish-brown hair and broad shoulders, UCLA t-shirt tight around his arms as he reaches for the vermouth.  
  
There are no women here.  
  
A vodka and coke, and he drinks it down fast. Drinks it all, what the hell, he paid for it and he’ll keep paying for it. The room tilts and turns with the lights and the bodies, and soon Jin is one of them, dissolving into the crowd.  
  
It’s hard everywhere. It’s the hard he’s forgotten, against his back, against his chest, wrapping arms around his stomach and pressing against his ass. He shivers at the feeling and he lets it go, forgets that he’s forgotten, makes it feel like only yesterday.  
  
The guy isn’t tall. Maybe a little shorter than Jin is, dark eyes and dark hair, but he’s got strong arms when they come around him, and his hips fit against Jin’s even on the dance floor. Jin can tell the guy wants him. Half a quart of vodka running through his veins, and he can’t feel anything else, but he can definitely feel that. The guy asks Jin if he wants to get out of there, and Jin closes his eyes to the low murmur.  
  
 _Yes_.  
  
Jin’s hotel isn’t far. The guy’s hand stays on Jin’s knee once they get in the cab, sort of possessive and creeping up his inner thigh, and Jin isn’t sure why he likes that so much but it makes him hard just looking at it.  
  
“Nice suite,” the guy says as Jin leads him inside, but he’s not even looking at the room, and it’s half in shadow anyway. He’s looking Jin up and down, eyes lingering shamelessly over the bulge in Jin’s pants, and Jin just keeps walking backwards, stumbling into tables and chairs and doorjambs until his shins back up against the foot of the bed.  
  
The guy gets up close, not touching him anywhere, just looking—and god, Jin wants his hands everywhere. Wants him everywhere. Now.  
  
Then he fists a hand in Jin’s t-shirt and drags him in, kissing hard as they topple over. His fingers fumble with the button and slip inside, and Jin moans into his mouth, doesn’t open his eyes, reaches for hips and ass and cock and pulls until the guy’s weight comes down on top of him too, heavy and hard and just like it should be.  
  
“I want to fuck you so bad,” the guy says, and all Jin can think is  _yes._  
  
 _God yes…_  
  
*      *      *  
  
When Jin wakes up, he’s alone.  
  
His head pounds with the light streaming through the half-open curtains, and the swaying of the bed makes his stomach lurch. He’s still naked and his skin feels covered in sweat and lube and someone else’s hands, his feet tangled in the sheet. He nearly trips on it when he runs for the bathroom.  
  
A hundred dollars’ worth of booze goes down the drain. After that it’s only dry heaves and shivering, trying not to sit down on the cold marble floor. Between waves he pulls all the towels off the shelf over the toilet and wraps the larger ones around himself to stave off the chill. After a while he sinks back against the wall and shivers, tries to catch his breath.  
  
He remembers enough to at least be pretty sure of what happened. It’s all scattered around him in jagged pieces and blurred sounds, and they don’t really fit together even when he tries to put them in order. He remembers the club. He remembers the guy. He remembers the sex. He doesn’t remember where it started or how it ended, or how he got from one moment to the next. And he doesn’t remember the guy’s face. He tries. He tries really hard, but it’s all in light and shadow, and he can’t fill in the blanks.  
  
He drops his head back against the wall, and it throbs. Almost sends him lurching for the toilet again, but there’s nothing left inside now.  
  
When he finally feels up to moving again, he unfolds himself from his patchwork cloak of towels and turns on the shower. He has to hold onto the walls just to keep himself steady enough not to slip, but the hot stream feels good all over when he finally gets underneath it. It burns away the hands on his skin, burns away the night and the morning. For a long time he just stands there with his eyes closed, sweeping his hair back from his face and letting the water rush over him. Carry everything away.  
  
It was a stupid thing to do.  
  
He knew that before he did it, knew it wouldn’t fix anything, but he did it anyway. It felt good at the time—it did, he can’t deny that even if it doesn’t feel good now. He doesn’t think he’s going to want that again, but he can’t be sure. He thought he was sure once before.  
  
This is fucked up.  
  
More water. More water and soap, fuck the questions, fuck everything. He feels sick again too, but it passes, only makes him unsteady every once in a while, and he’s really getting too old for this.  
  
There’s no point in rehashing it. No point in remembering all the things he decided, all the things he gave up, because he’s here now. This is life now, and it doesn’t matter if it’s lonely, it’s what he wanted.  
  
It’s what he chose.  
  
*      *      *  
  
 _Winter_  
  
The house manager tells him they’re out there just five minutes before the show, while he’s finishing up in the dressing room, getting ready to go out there. He doesn’t let it throw him—it’s fine, he’s fine, they’ve seen him do this shit a million times. Half the songs are half a decade old already. It’s cool.  
  
The crowd screams and cheers as he rises onto the stage, and of course he can’t see them or hear them out there in the dark. Can’t tell if they’re cheering or hating him. They wouldn’t come if they hated him, he knows that, but it still doesn’t help when he can’t actually see. He almost forgets, sometimes, that they’re watching, almost stops wondering what they’re thinking, what they’re seeing.  
  
What he sees.  
  
He can’t forget when it gets quiet though, when it gets old, and the crowd hangs on every note, and there are moments when Jin wonders if he’ll even make it through.  
  
They come by to see him when the show is over, get ushered back to his dressing room by a couple of staff, and Jin feels jittery like he never used to around them when the door opens and they walk in. But it’s only two.  
  
“I thought they said Kamenashi was around somewhere,” Jin says, perched on the arm of the sofa and fiddling with his cigarette pack, giving Nakamaru a sideways smile. “What, did he get mobbed or something?”  
  
Nakamaru exchanges a brief look with Ueda, but Ueda just shrugs like he wants to be left out of it.  
  
“He had to duck out early,” Nakamaru says. “He stayed right up to the encore though. Said to tell you you were great.”  
  
Jin nods and purses his lips, glancing down at the cigarette pack he keeps turning over in his fingers. “Cool,” he says, and tries to make it sound the way he means it. The way he wishes he could mean it.  
  
*      *      *


	7. 2012

_Winter_  
  
It’s always a slightly surreal experience to return when sober to a place you’ve only been to once when you were very very drunk. It’s a bit like wandering into a dream landscape—except you notice all the rough edges a little more than before. And it’s harder to find a parking spot.  
  
Jin isn’t really noticing much of anything this time though—he can barely keep his head on straight enough to parallel park two blocks away without denting any fenders, and he very nearly knocks over a pregnant woman with his car door in a fit of distraction, which even his jittery brain finds a little bit ironic.  
  
He bows his apologies to the startled woman, who has another little child clinging to her hand and a shopping bag in the crook of her arm, and looks nearly as frazzled and distracted as he is, and then he clicks the lock button twice over his shoulder and hurries up the block, glancing around to make sure he has his directions straight. He thinks he remembers that sandwich shop with the tree out front. They had a special on teriyaki BLTs that night—it was advertised in the front window. Funny what the brain remembers.  
  
The entryway looks familiar too when he finally comes upon it, and it only takes a quick scan of the apartment list to remember which number to ring. She buzzes him in, and he pulls the door open quickly, not wanting to miss it and make her buzz him through again.  
  
The elevator is very slow. Then there’s another little bit of turning and fidgeting, glancing around for signage, because there are three different hallways to choose from and they all look the same and he can’t remember—but there, that’s the one, the numbers go in the right direction. As he’s walking quickly down the hall, it finally occurs to him to wonder how he looks. He hasn’t exactly fixed himself up or anything—as soon as he got off the phone he dragged on a pair of pants and a coat and hopped in the car. His hair is a mess, but at least he showered this morning, and he did think to put on a knit cap and a pair of sunglasses—force of habit. He pushes the edge of the knit up a bit and wipes at his cheeks and hairline with his sleeve, because he’s sweating despite the January chill.  
  
Meisa answers on the first knock.  
  
Her smile looks relieved, and a little nervous—but it’s a smile, thank god. She sounded sort of shaky on the phone, but he was so shaky himself he couldn’t tell, maybe it was just him. He needed to see her. She’s wearing a cozy green sweater that hangs to her knees and a pair of black leggings with fluffy socks on her feet.  
  
“Hi,” he says, very intelligently. She looks good. She looks fine, not nearly as keyed up as he is. That’s good. She’s probably had a little more time to deal with this than he has, he realizes. She doesn’t exactly look like she just got home from the doctor.  
  
“Come on in,” she says, stepping aside and motioning toward the living room. “Make yourself comfortable.”  
  
“Thanks,” he mumbles, bowing a little, weirdly, as he bends over to loosen his shoes.  
  
“Do you want a drink?”  
  
He shakes his head quickly, straightening up. “No.” The last thing he needs is something else making his head fuzzy. “No, I’m fine—I mean, I probably shouldn’t.”  
  
She nods and tugs at her sweater sleeves a little, glancing over toward the living room, which they are still not in.  
  
What’s supposed to happen now?  
  
This is so weird.  
  
“You can have one though if you want, don’t let me stop you,” Jin blurts out.  
  
She raises both eyebrows at him.  
  
He stares back at her for a moment, and then…ah. “Oh.” His eyes flick briefly towards her stomach. “Right. Um. Sorry.”  
  
The smile flits across her face again, a little amused this time. Then she nods toward the living room again. “Go on and sit down. I’ll get us some ice water, and we’ll…talk.”  
  
Talk. Yes, that sounds good. That’s what’s supposed to happen now. They talk.  
  
He hangs his coat up on the coat rack and wanders into the living room while she’s shuffling around in the kitchen. He doesn’t really remember this part of the apartment very well—it was kind of just a blur in the dark as they stumbled through—but it’s really nice now that he looks at it in the light. Very cozy, but stylish too, with nice black and white photographs on the walls. He wonders if she hired a decorator or if she really is just organized enough to get around to making decisions about things like this. Jin has been shuffling the same fraying posters from apartment to apartment for the last ten years.  
  
He sits down at one end of the couch. It’s just as cozy as it looks—squishy enough to be comfortable, but not so you sink down so far you need help to get out again.  
  
The clink of ice against glass as she sets his water on a coaster in front of him makes him realize he should have offered to get the drink himself. But then she would have had to go with him to tell him where stuff was anyway, and anyway being four weeks pregnant probably doesn’t mean she’s not allowed to carry anything heavier than a pair of chopsticks and he should really stop being so ridiculous. He sits up straighter and takes a sip of water, trying to calm himself a bit as she takes a seat at the other end of the couch.  
  
“So,” she says, taking a sip from her own water glass and leaning over to set it on another coaster from the stack. “I’m going to have a baby.”  
  
Jin nods and sets the glass down again, wiping the moisture from his fingers on his jeans. They covered that much on the phone. He clears his throat. “Yeah, so I hear. How are you feeling?”  
  
“I’m fine,” she says with a little smile. “Honestly, no symptoms yet—I only thought to check because of, you know. Math.”  
  
Math. Jin blinks at her for a moment, wondering if there’s some kind of secret equation for this kind of thing that girls learn that guys don’t—until he figures out what she means and gets that little queasy feeling that he tends to get whenever that subject comes up.  
  
“Anyway,” she continues, “just…first of all, I want you to know that I’m not here to cause you any problems. I know how stuff works with your agency, and there’s no reason anybody ever has to know this has anything to do with you. I’ve already talked to my manager and—I didn’t tell them it was you, but I told them enough, and we’re sure we can come up with something.”  
  
Jin nods a little more, trying to get his head around that. “What about your agency though? How are they taking it?”  
  
“Pretty much how you’d expect. They’re not happy about it, obviously, but—well. You know. It’s not the same kind of situation. Their biggest problem is the fact that I’m not married.”  
  
Yeah. That’s definitely…not the same kind of situation.  
  
“Would it be easier if you were?”  
  
“Probably,” she says with a half-smile, leaning over to take another sip of her water. When she sets the glass down again, she catches Jin staring at her, and her eyes widen a little bit. “Oh. Oh god, no—I’m not—that is not what this is about, I swear. I really just wanted to let you know what was going on—I’m not asking you for—”  
  
“I know,” Jin says, and his heart is beating really hard now, because what he’s thinking is a little bit crazy. “But…if it would be easier…”  
  
She waves her hand quickly in front of her face and sits up straighter. “No. Jin, seriously—I’m not trying to be a hero here. I really just don’t want to be married. To anyone. And even if I did, I don’t believe in marrying someone you don’t love just because they knock you up.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“No.”  
  
“I know, but I just—”  
  
“Jin, absolutely not.”  
  
“But it’s my baby too!” Jin yells.  
  
Meisa looks slightly taken aback, and Jin immediately feels guilty again. He growls a little as he pushes himself to his feet and paces across the room, trying to get his thoughts straight again. If they were ever straight to begin with.  
  
It’s not like he doesn’t…he knows she’s right, obviously, it’s crazy. And it’s not like this is the way he wanted it—it’s not, he just—this is here,  _now_ , and he can’t seriously imagine… Like. This kid. There’s this kid, and it’s  _his_  kid, and it’s going to be out there somewhere walking around and all…his, and stuff, and—what, he’s just supposed to ignore that? Pretend it doesn’t exist?  
  
It’s not the way he wanted it—but the way he wanted it didn’t work out either. And maybe it will someday, who knows, but maybe it _won’t_ , and this…  
  
He swipes the hat off his head and scratches a hand roughly through his hair, not caring about the mess anymore.  
  
He can’t just walk away from this.  
  
“I get what you’re saying,” he says. “I’m not in love with you, you’re not in love with me. I get it. You’re right. And I get that you’re trying to let me off the hook here, and that’s really great of you—most guys in my situation would probably jump at the chance, but it’s just…I don’t want to. I don’t  _want_  to be off the hook. I want to be a dad.”  
  
He glances down at the hat in his hands. Pokes his thumbnail into a little hole forming on the inside of the rim. When he finally gets the courage to look up at her again, she’s looking back at him with sort of a frown, like she thinks he might be trying to pull something on her.  
  
“Really?”  
  
He nods quickly, not looking away.  
  
Her expression gets sort of pinched, and she wraps her arms around her middle a bit protectively, sinking back into the couch. “Okay, well…I don’t know. I mean, I don’t really know what to tell you, I’m just really not…”  
  
“You don’t have to marry me,” Jin interrupts. “I’m not saying that, I’m not saying you have to—I mean I  _would_ , if that’s what you need, but we don’t…I get it, okay?”  
  
“Then what are you saying, exactly?”  
  
What is he saying, exactly?  
  
“I want to be involved in this somehow,” he decides, after a few more jumbled half-thoughts. “Just, whatever you’re comfortable with. I’ll do it.”  
  
She looks up at him again, that sort of considering stare, like she thinks there’s a catch in here somewhere, something she won’t like. Or maybe she knows there is, and she’s just trying to decide how much she doesn’t like it.  
  
“This could be really bad for you though, right?” she tries after a bit, rubbing at her forearm over the sleeve of her sweater. “Are you sure you really want to do that? I mean, take all the flack and everything, not to mention whatever your agency would do about it. It’s really not necessary—I’m totally fine on my own, I promise.”  
  
“I know you are,” Jin says. “I’m not.”  
  
She looks up again at that. Still wary, still uncomfortable, but now she actually looks  _guilty_ , and shit, that’s not what he meant to—awesome. Just perfect.  
  
“Sorry,” he says, waving that off and trying to take it back. “Sorry, I don’t mean to—I know it’s not your problem, nobody meant for this to happen. And if you really need me to just disappear, I can…I’ll try, okay? But the thing is, I just…I really don’t want to. I don’t care about the consequences.”  
  
“Okay,” she says, nodding a bit and glancing down at the coffee table again. “Okay, I get that too, I just—this is a really huge decision here. For both of us. And I really wasn’t expecting…”  
  
“I know,” he nods back. “I know.”  
  
She sighs and leans her head back against the couch cushion. She looks tired all of a sudden, and Jin thinks maybe this whole thing is affecting her more than she let on. Hell, it’s thrown him for a loop, and he’s not even the one who has to do all the…stuff. Makes him a little queasy just thinking of it, so he stops that pretty quickly.  
  
He feels a bit lightheaded, maybe the tail end of the adrenaline rush. Maybe sympathy pains—that’s a thing, right? Either way, he kind of feels like he should sit down, so he slumps down into the couch a little more heavily than he normally would at somebody else’s place. Somebody he doesn’t really know all that well except that she’s nice and looks hot peeling a black sequined tank top over her head. And she’s carrying his baby.  
  
It feels really weird.  
  
“Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad,” she says eventually, half to herself.  
  
He glances over at her across the couch. She’s still staring up at the ceiling, fingertips rolling a bit of yarn from her sweater sleeve back and forth.  
  
“Playing house, or whatever,” she finishes with a little half-smile. “And I guess some stuff would be easier if there were two of us.”  
  
Jin doesn’t say anything. Just watches her think it through, hoping she’ll end up at the right conclusion.  
  
Then she glances over at him, plain and soft and only a little apologetic. “I meant it though—I really don’t want to be married. If we’re seriously considering trying this, I really don’t want to turn this into…a  _thing_. Are you sure you’re okay with that?”  
  
If he’s really honest with himself, Jin isn’t sure he’s okay with that.  
  
It’s the truth—he doesn’t know. He’s not in love with her right now, but she’s beautiful, and she’s smart, and they were good together. What he can remember was good, anyway. He hasn’t really been with anybody in a while, not for more than a one-off thing—and this isn’t exactly that, what they’re talking about, but it’s exactly the kind of thing…that might get him into trouble. If he’s not careful.  
  
He’s been there before.  
  
But right now, he’s not. And if that changes…he can deal. He’s been there before too.  
  
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I’m cool with that. We’ll figure it out.”  
  
*      *      *  
  
 _Summer_  
  
“We are not putting my couch in your studio,” Meisa says, shifting her weight to the other foot. She’s already got one hand on the back of her hip trying to take a little of the pressure off her spine.  
  
“But mine is bigger.”  
  
“Jin, we talked about this.”  
  
“Yeah,” he agrees. “And we measured everything and agreed that mine was bigger.”  
  
“And that it doesn’t go with the rest of the living room set as well as my couch—”  
  
“Which is  _smaller_ …”  
  
“— _and_  has a matching loveseat, so it’s perfect. We’ll look at the blue curtains.”  
  
“Meisa…” he sighs, following her over to the other display of window dressings.  
  
“Don’t argue with a pregnant lady, Jin.”  
  
He gives her a look. “You only get to use that once a day—you sure you want to waste it on curtains?”  
  
She ignores him with a bland smile. “What do you think of the taffeta?”  
  
It’s an argument he’s not going to win this time. Anyway, she’s sort of right about the loveseat—he forgot about that. It wouldn’t go with his couch if they put that out in the living room, and if they try to cram both into his studio there won’t be any room left for studio equipment. He still thinks his couch is better for when people come over to hang out, but Meisa’s furniture is in better condition anyway for when there are fancier guests, and whatever. He can cope.  
  
Compromise. He can do that.  
  
He reaches out to finger the taffeta. It’s pretty, but it’s also kind of fussy. He thinks it might look weird in the living room with Meisa’s modern photoprint décor, but then this isn’t really his area. He’s still mourning his naked lady posters. (Though he agreed he would feel funny having them on display once there’s a baby in the house.)  
  
“Oh,” he says, frowning at the pull cord dangling from the blinds Meisa is eyeing to complement the curtains. “Wait no, we can’t do these ones.”  
  
“Why not?” she asks, flipping through a little brochure on the specs and color choices.  
  
“Because,” Jin says, dangling the pull cord to get her attention. “They’re a hazard. I’ve been reading about this. Kids get, like, tangled up in them or pull the curtains down on themselves or swallow stuff.”  
  
She closes the brochure again, looking incredulous. “So we need blinds without a pull cord.”  
  
“A shorter one, at least.”  
  
A few moments later a salesman greets them and casually mentions their high-end line of electric remote-controlled window covering systems. When he shows them how the little controller thing works and hands them a brochure detailing the ten different styles and fourteen available colors, for the first time today, Jin and Meisa are in complete agreement.  
  
After they’ve got the blinds sorted they take the roundabout route through the soft furnishings section to look at accent rugs. (Meisa’s got one, but it’s ratty and old and she wants to throw it out. Jin doesn’t actually know what an accent rug is, but he finds some nice patterns. One even matches the curtains.) When Meisa gets caught up in hand towels and dish towels, Jin slips away to the electronics section to look at video cameras. He can take videos on his phone, obviously, but he’s never really owned an actual video camera just for videos with fancy zoom features and cords you can plug into the TV to show people stuff. He likes the idea of being one of those dads who’s got a library of home movies to bore people with whenever they come over to visit.  
  
There’s a wall of huge TVs next to him all moving in sync, and when he looks up from one of the Sony models he finds twenty giant Kames all staring back at him, damp and naked to the waist, drawing some fancy razor across their cheeks.  
  
He looks good.  
  
Jin smiles.  
  
He looks different than the last time Jin saw him—more solid or something, but also kind of the same as always. Jin wonders what he’s up to now, besides shaving underneath some kind of waterfall in what looks like outer space, because he hasn’t been keeping track—he sees things sometimes, of course, and he even spotted him across a crowded lobby at the agency about a year ago, but, well. There hasn’t been much of that lately.  
  
He watches the shaving Kames make eyes at the camera and wonders absently if Kame’s number is still the same one it used to be. If he would pick up now if Jin called him.  
  
But he doesn’t call him. He’s tempted, but there’s no good reason he can give short of “I saw you on twenty TV screens in Shibuya today”—and anyway, he’s got the curtains to deal with. The guy said they would call his cell phone in a couple of hours to schedule the delivery and installation. And the video camera, of course—he thinks he’s narrowed it down to three. He’s got things he needs to do.  
  
And he’s really pretty okay with that.  
  
It’s a commercial for shampoo next, and then some portable music device, and Jin goes back to the video cameras. Meisa turns up a little while later with two bags full of towels for Jin to carry. He takes the little spec slips for the two cameras he’s still deciding between and follows her out of the store.  
  
*      *      *  
  
 _Fall_  
  
The first time Jin holds his daughter in his arms is probably the most terrifying day of his life.  
  
All the hospital stuff was bad enough to begin with, Meisa in pain and stressed out, and everybody speaking in soothing voices that are really not very soothing at all when you understand what’s about to happen. Jin went to the classes. He watched the video. (That was the second most terrifying day of his life. Meisa looked kind of green too.)  
  
But even when all that is over, when Meisa is blissed out on medication and hormones and the rush of not having to worry about doing _that_  anymore, the terror doesn’t really go away. When Meisa offers him the baby and he bends down to scoop her carefully out of Meisa’s arms, this feeling comes over him that sort of makes it seem like his heart might explode and leak out of his eye sockets. He’s never been so happy to hold anybody in his entire life.  
  
He's always been good with kids, but he hasn't spent all that much time around infants, and it takes him by surprise just how incredibly tiny and fragile she is. He's wanted this for as long as he can remember, and he's always known he'll be a really awesome dad—but when suddenly there's this heartbeat in his hands that he can actually  _feel_ , the sense of responsibility is overwhelming. He still knows he’ll be an awesome dad, but being the guy who has to keep this tiny little thing safe and breathing and alive…he’s not quite as sure about that.  
  
He's really glad he doesn't have to be alone in this. He's glad none of them do.  
  
His daughter sleeps, and Meisa sleeps, and Jin just sits there in the chair by the bedside glancing from one to the other of them and thinking, this. This is enough. This is all he needs.  
  
*      *      *  
  
 _Spring_  
  
The noise feels like it’s actually drilling into his skull. The rocking and bouncing isn’t even really soothing anymore, more sort of desperate, and he just wishes he had his fucking hands free so he could clamp them around his head and maybe muffle the ear-shattering sobs, just a little bit.  
  
“Come on, come on, what’s next,” he urges, knees jerking as he tries to keep the movement up—god he’s tired. The little bundle in his arms keeps getting heavier by the hour.  
  
Meisa presses fingers to the corners of her eyes again and flips back and forth through the pages of the book on her knees. “I don’t know, okay?” she barks back. “What do you want from me, we’ve tried everything in here.” She gets up and throws the book onto the couch, driving her fingers into her hair as she paces across the room. “I have to be up in three hours…”  
  
“What about the bottle again?”  
  
“You saw it—she wouldn’t take it. It just made her cry harder.”  
  
“Well…maybe she’s sick or something, do we have any of that acetaminophen left from last time?”  
  
“I’m not just going to give her painkillers for no reason—and we took her temperature an  _hour_  ago, it was normal.”  
  
Jin growls a little bit frantically and stalks off across the room, but it’s no good. There’s nowhere he can go to get away from the sound. It’s like having a fire alarm living in his head.  
  
“What if we just all get in bed together?”  
  
She gapes at him. “What if we  _what_?”  
  
“If we— Relax, I’m not making a pass at you—”  
  
“Oh my god,” she interrupts him, clawing her hair back from her face, and she sounds half ready to hit him—or maybe like she would have already, if he weren’t holding the baby. “I can’t believe you even think you have to say that…”  
  
“What’s your problem then?”  
  
“Jin, co-sleeping is  _dangerous_ , you can roll over and suffocate them, cause brain damage—didn’t you read that article I sent you? Seriously, you never—”  
  
“I’m  _fucking exhausted_ , Meisa,” he yells—and then immediately regrets it when the next cry comes back twice as loud. “Shit—fuck—my mom did it with both of us for years, okay? It’s  _fine_.”  
  
“Well, that explains a lot,” she snaps, and then she marches over to him and holds her arms out. “Give her to me. Go to bed if you’re so fucking exhausted, god knows you have  _such an early schedule_  in the morning.”  
  
There’s a little bit of fumbling as Meisa tries to carefully curl the screaming baby into her chest without actually touching him in the process. Though she does manage to elbow him in the ribs as she turns away toward the kitchen.  
  
The pounding in his head subsides a little once she’s around the corner, and Jin breathes out for the first time in hours. He scratches at his hair, covers his ears to muffle the sound even more and glances longingly towards the bedrooms, and for a minute he really  _almost_ goes. Really.  
  
But he doesn’t. Instead, he grits his teeth and walks into the kitchen, where Meisa is setting up the bottle warmer again. He grabs one of the nipples out of the dish drainer and starts wiping it dry.  
  
When he glances up again, he notices Meisa has stopped. She’s got the bottle all set up with the liner and the formula in it, and the light on the bottle warmer says it’s ready to go, but she’s just sort of standing there leaning against the counter, one arm bouncing Theia as she continues to wail.  
  
Jin reaches over and takes the bottle out of her hand to put the cap on it, and she sort of flinches away, face hidden by her hair where a big swath of it has fallen out of its ponytail. When Jin leans across to put the bottle in the warmer, he hears a stifled sniff in between the screams.  
  
“Shit,” he murmurs, looking down at Meisa’s bowed head. “Not you too now.”  
  
“Don’t start with me, Jin,” she says, trying for fierce, but it comes out all wobbly.  
  
“I’m not  _starting_  with you I’m just—I don’t know what to do.”  
  
She gives a watery laugh and sniffs again. “I don’t know what to do either,” she says, and he can see a couple tears slip down her cheeks as she shifts the baby’s weight a little higher in her arms. And then she just looks at him, and it’s scary. She looks scared, and so, so tired. “I don’t know if I can do this.”  
  
Jin doesn’t know what to say.  
  
He wraps an arm around her from the side and pulls her shoulder against his chest, because it’s all he can think of to do. She leans into him, so he brings the other arm around too, running fingers lightly over the tangles at the back of her head. The kitchen still echoes with the screams, and Meisa sniffles into his t-shirt, and he mumbles something soothing that probably doesn’t make any sense as the three of them rock back and forth, back and forth.  
  
After a little while, it gets strangely…quiet.  
  
“Oh my god,” Meisa whispers, going very, very still in his arms. “Oh my god, Jin, do you hear what I hear?”  
  
Jin nods. He doesn’t dare let her go, because he really, really, really doesn’t want to fuck this up.  
  
“Just…move slowly, okay?” Meisa says, and Jin nods again. Then he very, very carefully unwinds his arms from around Meisa’s shoulders, just enough so that they can look down at the baby between them.  
  
She’s not actually asleep. She’s still sort of sniffling and hiccupping, chewing innocently on her tiny little fingers as she blinks up at them with huge brown eyes. But she’s not crying.  
  
“Well shit,” Jin breathes. “I guess misery really does love company.”  
  
“Shut up,” Meisa mumbles back, a little damp, but smiling.  
  
*      *      *  
  
 _Summer_  
  
The key rattles a bit in the lock before he hears the door opening, and the sound of her heels on the floor of the genkan. He scoops up another mouthful of cereal, eyes glued to the set. There’s more rustling and jingling behind him as she sheds her shoes and purse, drops her keys on the table by the door where they keep the mail.  
  
“How was your date?” he asks when he hears her walk into the living room.  
  
She sighs and drops down onto the couch beside him. Jin sets aside his cereal bowl and lifts his arm up to leave her space to curl up next to him, and when she rests her head on his shoulder his arm falls easily around hers. “Great,” she mumbles into his t-shirt. “The fish was dry, the conversation was drier, and I’m home by ten.”  
  
Jin gives her a commiserating smile and a little squeeze. She readjusts her cheek against his shoulder, squirming and straightening her rumpled skirt a bit to make herself more comfortable before sagging against him again.  
  
“How about yours?”  
  
“Fantastic, actually,” Jin says. “We had pizza with a side of mushy peas, the juice cup only ended up on the floor twice, and she fell asleep in her yogurt at eight-fifteen.”  
  
Meisa laughs sleepily. “How romantic.”  
  
“Still better than yours.”  
  
“No arguments there.”  
  
They fall silent for a bit. The newsreader is standing next to a video screen showing headlines about an accident at a construction site somewhere near the city hall. Traffic has been backed up around the city all day, apparently, not that Jin has noticed. He only left the house once this morning, to pick up some coffee grounds at the market on the corner. There weren’t any traffic jams on the sidewalk.  
  
“Jin?”  
  
“Hm,” Jin murmurs absently, frowning at the picture of a crane tipped over on its side. Looks like a little piece of the building was damaged too. He hopes nobody was in there, but it’s a construction site, so it’s hard to tell where the people would be. The headlines don’t say anything about injuries. They’re mostly just talking about traffic.  
  
“You’ll tell me if this isn’t working for you anymore, right?”  
  
Jin blinks down at her. Her eyes are open again, and she’s looking up at him a little bit seriously. Kind of guiltily, actually, which Jin isn’t quite sure what to do with.  
  
“If what isn’t?”  
  
She glances back toward the television and shifts in her seat, sliding out from under his arm to sit up properly beside him, facing him a little. “This arrangement. You’ll tell me, right?”  
  
Jin stares at her, frowning. “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t it be working for me?”  
  
Meisa shrugs and glances down again, pulling at the edges of her skirt. She looked really pretty tonight, and she still does even with her hair falling down from its French roll and her clothes sort of wrinkled. Jin really isn’t sure where she’s going with this.  
  
“I don’t know,” she says. “I just…I mean, tonight. I go off on a date and leave you here with all the dirty work, and then I come home and just…you know. You’re like…here for me. I feel like I’m taking advantage of you.”  
  
“You’re not taking advantage of me,” Jin says, trying to keep the little pang of indignation from coming through in his voice as he pushes himself up to sit too. “You said yourself I had a better evening than you did. You think I mind taking care of her? You think just because I’m a guy I can’t deal with some dirty—”  
  
“That’s  _not_  what I’m saying,” she interrupts, with a sharp look that says he should know better. “This isn’t a parenting competition—I’m talking about you and me. Our deal.”  
  
“What about it?”  
  
The sharp look turns back into that guilty one again. She’s sort of chewing her tongue, like she’s got something on the tip of it that she’s not sure if she should let out or not.  
  
“What?”  
  
“You haven’t been out with anyone in three months, Jin.”  
  
Jin frowns. She’s still looking guilty, and he’s trying to figure out why she thinks that’s her fault—or why she thinks it’s a problem, for that matter.  
  
“I’ve been out,” he says. “I met the guys at the club just last—”  
  
“On a date,” she clarifies. “I mean…on a date.”  
  
Jin frowns a bit more. Then…it starts to make sense.  
  
It also sort of annoys him.  
  
“So what?” he shrugs, slumping back into his seat and reaching for his cereal bowl again. He scoops up a little bite and slurps it into his mouth. It’s…pretty soggy and disgusting by now, but he swallows it anyway just to be polite.  
  
“So…don’t you think that’s…unusual?”  
  
“No,” he replies, poking at his cereal with the spoon and giving a little half-shrug. The news has moved on to sports coverage now. Looks like it’s baseball season again.  
  
She doesn’t seem convinced.  
  
He puts the cereal bowl aside again. “I’m busy, Meisa.”  
  
“You’re on hiatus.”  
  
“That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped working—it just means they won’t let me show it to anybody. And anyway, I have a kid.”  
  
“So do I.”  
  
“Well then you know what I mean, don’t you.”  
  
“But that’s exactly my point, Jin—I don’t want you feeling stuck here while I’m off…whatever. This is exactly why I didn’t want a relationship in the first place—I don’t want to feel like I’m cheating you just by doing what I want to do.”  
  
“So, what, you can’t be happy doing what you want to do unless I find someone to fuck once a week?”  
  
“No—I’m just saying—”  
  
“Meisa, I’m fine,” he says. “Do you hear me? I’m absolutely fine. You’re not taking advantage of me—you’d know it if you were, I promise you. I can take care of myself.”  
  
She looks at him carefully, but he thinks maybe he’s finally getting through. “You’re sure about that? It really doesn’t bother you being stuck here when I go out?”  
  
“I’m not stuck here—she’s my daughter. I love taking care of her. Women have been doing it for centuries.”  
  
“Not usually so their husbands can go off on dates with other people.”  
  
“I think you might be surprised.”  
  
Meisa nods a bit, wryly. “Fair point,” she says. Then she shifts toward him a bit, poking him  gently in the shoulder. He only gives a cursory grumble as he lets her have her spot against his side again.   
  
They watch some guy from the Hanshin Tigers hit a homerun three times on a loop as the sportscaster rattles off a series of league statistics.  
  
“You’re sure you wouldn’t rather be out there more yourself though?” Meisa says after a bit. When he sighs, she rushes to continue. “I mean, I get that you can take care of yourself and all, and I’m not saying you have to go out with people just to alleviate my guilt, but…don’t you think it might be good for you? To have that balance?”  
  
Jin drops his head back against the couch cushions and glances up toward the ceiling, considering the question. It’s not an unreasonable one, really—three months is kind of a long dry spell for him, and she’s politely not mentioning the four months that went before that. But he really doesn’t think it means anything. He checks in with himself regularly—Jin knows he’s the jealous type, but he’s never really felt anything like jealousy when Meisa goes out on a date with someone, so he doesn’t think it’s that. His sex drive is fine, and it’s not like he doesn’t sneak a peek once in a while, especially when she wears that red dress—but that’s off-limits for good reasons, and it’s totally not worth fucking this up just so he doesn’t have to jerk off in the shower. And all the other time and hassle involved in finding someone, taking them out, making conversation, getting them into bed, worrying about strings and expectations and tabloid fallout…it all just seems like a lot more trouble than it’s worth. Especially when he already has the main thing he always wanted it to lead him to eventually anyway—and he could be spending that time at home with her.  
  
“I like my life,” he says quietly, squeezing her shoulders a little—because it’s her too, no doubt about it. “I’m happy with what I’ve got right now, honest. I date when I want to, but…I just don’t really want to right now. And it’s not your fault, I promise. It’s not anyone’s fault—it’s not even a problem. I’m happy with things the way they are. Is that okay?”  
  
She turns her head to look up at him again, scrutinizing a little, looking for holes. But there aren’t any. He’s pretty sure there aren’t.  
  
Then she reaches over and pats him on the stomach a little, snuggling a bit closer and finally relaxing. “If you say so.”  
  
“I do,” he confirms with a final little nod. “Now shut up—that show with the guy who dresses like a banana is about to come on.”  
  
*      *      *  
  
 _Fall_  
  
Eggs are really very unpopular this morning.  
  
Meisa is running late—coffee-burn late, by the sound of things, but it’s Jin’s morning with Theia anyway, so at least she doesn’t have that to worry about. He’s been trying to stay out of her way as she puts together her own breakfast, and the kiddo has been helping him out by throwing her scrambled eggs on the floor. So far he’s spent more time this morning sitting under the table than at it.  
  
The morning news hums in the background, and Jin glances over at it as he dumps a handful of eggs in the trash and reaches for another paper towel. He’s been trying to get better about keeping up with what’s going on in the world, but it’s more difficult now that he’s actively working again. There are only so many hours in the day, and most of his are taken up with diapers and music.  
  
Meisa kisses Theia on the forehead as she grabs her purse and coat off the back of the chair next to her. “I won’t be late, but text me if you need to leave earlier and I’ll figure something out.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” Jin says, finally getting back to his own breakfast again. “I don’t have to be there until four.”  
  
“Alright, well I should be back by two. Bye!”  
  
Jin mumbles “bye” back around a mouthful of eggs and tugs the paper toward him from the other side of the table. He’s only three sentences in when the sippy cup goes flying, and Theia giggles. He narrows eyes at her.  
  
“Now that one was on purpose,” he accuses. She just giggles again, and he sets his fork back down on his plate to go clean the milk splatters off the wall.  
  
The name pricks his ears while he’s at the sink rinsing out the washcloth, but he can’t really hear the announcers over the running water. When he glances back over his shoulder to see if he heard right, there’s a really huge, not very flattering picture of Koki splashed across the screen, and Jin feels a weird chill.  
  
Photos like that don’t go public.  
  
He turns off the sink and grabs a towel on his way over to the living room, drying his hands off as he stares at the television.  
  
“Shit,” he murmurs. And if Meisa were still here she’d be scolding him for his language, but he can’t help it. There’s nothing else to say.  
  
His name comes up—of course it does, he knew it would the minute he got straight what they were talking about. He wishes it wouldn’t, because it can’t be helping anybody, but there’s no way around that.  
  
He wants to call somebody.  
  
His phone is in the pocket of his sweatpants, and he drops the hand towel on the kitchen counter again as he pulls it out, starts flicking through his contacts. There are a couple of different people who would make sense, and he’s not even sure whether he wants to know what the fuck happened or he just wants to…help. Somehow.  
  
He still hasn’t decided when he taps the name and puts the phone to his ear. It’s silent for too long.  
  
 _“The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please check that you have dialed correctly…”_  
  
It feels a bit heavy when he hears it, even though it doesn’t really surprise him. Doesn’t really have anything to do with him, specifically, and he knows that. Jin has changed numbers twice since then himself.  
  
He thinks about who else he could call—he’s pretty sure Nakamaru’s number is still up to date, because they just had lunch six months ago, and he usually loops Jin in when he changes it. And even if it isn’t, there’s the agency—they always keep track of these things, he could get the right number from them if he needs to. Pi might even know—he’s not sure how often they talk, but he gets the impression they’re still in touch.  
  
The news has moved on to something else now, and Jin is still standing there with the phone in his hand and that disconnect message sort of ringing in his ears. And the thing is, there’s nothing he can actually do.  
  
And he doesn’t really want to hear Kame say that he’s the last person he wants to talk to right now.  
  
Theia babbles something  _loud_  at him that includes her word for “water and/or any liquid,” and Jin realizes he’s being summoned to finish the job of returning to her the milk she threw across the room.  
  
He puts his phone back in his pocket and gets back to work.  
  
When he’s cleaning up their breakfast dishes a little while later, his ears prick up at the sound of Kame’s voice coming from across the room, familiar mumbles from old press conferences. By the time Jin looks around at the screen, he’s already gone.  
  
*      *      *  
  
 _Spring_  
  
A concert isn’t really the best place for talking. The crowd is so noisy they practically have to shout to be heard, and he can’t get all the way up into Kame’s row because there are people sitting there. But they’re talking. They’re actually talking.  
  
Jin tells him he left the agency, and Kame even smiles a little.  
  
“Yeah, I read the papers.”  
  
Kame’s hair is darker and shorter than Jin has seen it in a long time, and Kame’s face… He looks different, but he also looks the same. Always the same. Jin thinks maybe a hundred years could go by and he could still pick Kame out of a crowd.  
  
Kame smiles, and Kame’s eyes look straight into him like they used to back then, like it makes him happy to see Jin happy and…god, fuck, Jin doesn’t even know what to do with that feeling. Is it relief? It feels warmer than that, sadder than that.  
  
Maybe this is how it’s supposed to be.  
  
He wishes he could get closer, but the concert is about to start and there are too many people moving between them, and they don’t care that Kame is an idol and Jin isn’t anymore, they just want to get to their seats. When the announcements start and the crowd gets noisier Jin has to stand on tiptoe to motion to him that he’s going back to his seat. Kame nods and smiles and lifts a hand, and then the house goes dark and the music rises.  
  
*      *      *


	8. 2014

_Fall_  
  
Jin pulls surreptitiously at the collar of his tux as he glances longingly at the bar, which is approximately ten steps and five-hundred people away. Days like this he almost misses the sequins and feathers. At least those costumes usually had a nice open neckline.  
  
Meisa is talking to some woman who wrote some thing she did a few years ago, and Jin has been nodding along for about the last twenty minutes, wondering if it would be terribly rude of him to disappear and try to fight his way to the bar for another gin and tonic. There are supposed to be waiters around here, but the room is so crowded all Jin can see is the occasional disembodied tray floating above the heads of networking industry professionals and their various spouses and managers and unspecified hangers-on.  
  
It’s part of the deal, he knows, and it’s not only for her benefit. He needs the connections too, now more than ever. But he hates rooms like this, full of strangers and people he should probably remember from somewhere, and all the small talk and random opportunities he’s supposed to somehow pick up on and make use of, when really all he wants to do is take off his tie, unbutton his pants, order a beer and talk to somebody who isn’t trying to buy him or sell him on something.  
  
He’s just decided to try to make a break for the bar when he glances over toward the door and sees Kame handing his coat to the coat check guy.  
  
All thoughts of the bar have evaporated.  
  
It’s not that strange that he would be here, Jin reminds himself. He probably even could have predicted it if he’d been thinking straight, Kame was always better at this stuff than he was. He even seemed to enjoy it. Jin never really bothered before—he didn’t have to, not like this—and now that he’s thinking of it maybe he should have tried this sooner, because…  
  
No. That’s not the point, that’s not why he’s here, and that’s not why Kame is here either, so just…no. Don’t be stupid.  
  
But Kame has seen him now too, even smiled a little from across the room. Or—well, it looked like he did. There are a lot of heads in the way, but Kame definitely saw him, and Jin is pretty sure he smiled.  
  
Kame disappears again for a while, but Jin catches sight of him again here and there, between the heads. Shaking hands with a couple of old guys by the buffet table, talking earnestly with a woman in dark green satin. Kame looks good in a tux. It works on him, like he belongs to it.  
  
“Don’t you agree?” the producer woman says, and Jin gives a start, blinking across at her. Meisa is looking at him too, like she gets that he wasn’t listening and she’s on the verge of jumping in to rescue him—but no, he can totally do this, he doesn’t need a handler. Anymore. Mostly.  
  
“Absolutely,” he says. “You couldn’t be more right.”  
  
The producer woman gives him a satisfied little nod, and apparently it was something about broadcast content standards that Jin doesn’t  _really_  agree with, now that he’s listening—but that was still probably the right answer, under the circumstances. Especially as Meisa seems to be angling for something in their spring season.  
  
“So how have you been?”  
  
Jin doesn’t jump. Totally not. Maybe looks around a little bit quickly, and the way Kame’s smile spreads says he got exactly the reaction he wanted.  
  
Jin blinks. He’s standing right there. Kame is  _right there_.  
  
“We didn’t get to talk much the last time I saw you,” Kame says.  
  
Jin swallows. His mouth is dry, but his drink is still empty—he never did make it to the bar, he was too busy Kame-stalking. And Kame _still_  snuck up on him.  
  
“No,” Jin says, eloquently.  
  
“Kamenashi-san,” the producer woman effuses, and Kame perks up, immediately on his game.  
  
“Takeda-san, so lovely to see you again,” he greets her with a bow. The man next to him bows a little too, and Jin blinks when he realizes it’s the coat-check guy.  
  
Or. Okay, maybe not the coat-check guy. No, Jin’s got this one. Right. Up to speed.  
  
“Oh,” Kame says, turning a little to let the guy into the circle. “I’m so sorry, this is a friend of mine, Sato Hiroshi. Hiroshi, this is Takeda Saori-san, from NTV—and this is Kuroki Meisa and Akanishi Jin.”  
  
Jin shakes hands with the guy, who has a friendly smile and nice eyes, sort of boring short hair but it works on him. He also looks nice in a tux.  
  
It’s not obvious to the others as Kame introduces him around, explains he’s a cinematographer who worked on one of Kame’s films this year and he’s trying to get out there more, because everybody is schmoozing here, trying to get somewhere—but Jin knows. That casual touch at the back of Kame’s elbow to get his attention and that subtle sweeping glance when Kame watches him pushing through to the bar to get them drinks. This guy is not just a friend.  
  
It aches. It actually surprises Jin how much it aches.  
  
Takeda-san is trying to recruit Kame to the cause of better broadcasting standards now, pointing to Yokai Ningen Bem as an example of wholesome family television. Jin knows that blandly pleasant smile anywhere.  
  
“Well, it’s true that it’s important to take messages into account when choosing material,” Kame agrees, nodding thoughtfully over his scotch. “But there are twenty-four hours in the day, and I think we all benefit from a system that promotes creativity and experimentation. Within reason, of course.”  
  
 _Well done, Representative Kamenashi_ , Jin thinks as Takeda-san nods a bit, as if he’s actually made a point and not just rattled off some nonsense.  
  
“So,” Hiroshi says, sidling up to Jin, “you’re a musician, right?”  
  
Jin looks at him, a couple of thoughts flicking by— _doesn’t talk about me much, huh, doesn’t talk about work at all, surely it would come up even now_ —before he pushes them down and out of the way. Not important. Nice guy, asking him about his work. Stay in the moment. “Yeah,” he says, nodding a little. “Yeah, I mostly write stuff and sing it. Play a little guitar, but, you know.”  
  
“That’s cool,” Hiroshi says. “I tried to learn to play the guitar when I was a kid, but I think I only lasted a week. Nobody told me it would get easier if I did it for a while, built up the calluses.”  
  
“Yeah,” Jin says, thinking of sitting with his guitar on Kame’s bed at his parents’ house and fumbling his way through old Beatles songs from a fake book while Kame sat next to him calling out requests. “Yeah, that part was pretty…yeah.”  
  
It runs out of steam there. Jin glances around the room, playing for time, sifting for thoughts. Kame and Meisa are still deeply engaged with Takada-san on the subject of…something about gender in media, Jin’s not going to touch that one. So, yeah, no help there.  
  
“Cinematography though, huh?” he says, finally remembering he has a tiny bit of experience with that. Sort of. From in front of the camera, anyway. “What’s that like? I mean, how does it actually…work?”  
  
Fortunately for Jin, Hiroshi is better at this than he is, and he chats to Jin about wide-angle lenses and focus pulling and doesn’t get annoyed or condescending when Jin demonstrates his surface-level understanding. He’s really a nice guy. Jin thinks he would actually kind of not mind having a beer with him sometime if he didn’t happen to be Kame’s secret boyfriend.  
  
Kame glances over at the pair of them apologetically a while later when Takeda-san is still holding court. Hiroshi makes a subtle little gesture at Kame’s empty glass, and Kame nods back gratefully, and Jin…feels out of place. A little superfluous and a little resentful, even though he knows he has no right to be.  
  
Hiroshi goes off to brave the bar again, and Jin is left at sea. He doesn’t really want to get sucked back into Takeda-san’s circle, and when he nudges her elbow Meisa sends him a little nod that seems to say “run, save yourself”—so he does.  
  
It’s awkward wandering around in a crowd like this with no one to latch onto. He’s sort of caught between wanting to join a conversation and see if he can strike up some business and wanting to avoid them all, just in case he gets stuck or runs out of things to stay. He takes a brief swing by the buffet table for a couple of tiny shrimp toast pieces and a bite-sized bundle of baby asparagus that turns out to be seasoned with something spicy, and then he circles the room again, looking out for familiar faces.  
  
Eventually he finds one, over by the windows where it’s less crowded—a recording engineer friend of Zen’s, he’s met him once or twice before. They’ve been meaning to work together on something someday but it hasn’t really worked out so far. He’s got a friend with him too, a woman from New Zealand who’s in Tokyo working as a music journalist. She’s got a tattoo on her arm, just peeking out from under the sleeve of her dress.  
  
They talk about the tour, about what comes after the tour. The woman even sounds like she might want to write something about him, so he gives her one of the cards in his pocket and tells her to be in touch with his manager—they’d love to have her stop by sometime, show her around the studio. Not that it’s much to look at yet, but hey, that’s part of the indie vibe. She seems into that.  
  
He spots Takada-san again eventually, but neither Meisa nor Kame is with her, so they both must have found a way out at some point. When he sees Kame again, he and Hiroshi are standing off in a corner together, heads bent close in conversation as they look out over the room. Jin turns back to his own circle, doesn’t look over there again.  
  
There’s a fashion photographer then, and a film producer, and a couple of old guys who think Jin would make an excellent spokesman for cologne if it weren’t for certain political realities in the industry. When Jin finally finds himself alone again, he glances around the room and finds it quite a bit emptier than before. He’s pretty tired—pretty ready to go home, actually, and that’s fair game now. He managed to trade a few business cards, and he’s stayed through the bulk of the thing. He’s earned his unbuttoned pants.  
  
He catches Meisa’s eye across the room, but she shakes her head, indicating the man she’s in deep conversation with. Looks important. Better give her a few minutes. That’s okay, he can hang on for a few more minutes.  
  
So he scans the room again, wondering if he should see if there’s anything left of the buffet, or maybe check the armchairs by the windows and sit down for a while. He’s just about to head for the buffet when he notices Kame sitting alone at the bar.  
  
Decision made.  
  
“Can I get another gin and tonic, please?” Jin says to the bartender, and Kame glances up as Jin slides into the seat beside him. He’s nursing another scotch, looking a bit tired but not totally wrung out, which Jin figures is good. Some of it might be the booze, he thinks as he notices Kame swirling the ice in the glass and smiling at it sort of fuzzily.  
  
The bartender sets a napkin in front of Jin and puts his fresh drink on top of it. Jin smiles and thanks him, then lifts the glass to his lips to take a sip.  
  
“He seems nice,” Jin says after a bit.  
  
He watches Kame’s reflection turn toward him in the artfully fragmented mirror across the bar. “Who? Hiroshi?”  
  
“Yeah,” Jin says with a knowing little smile, “ _Hiroshi_.”  
  
Kame narrows eyes at the informality.  
  
“He is nice,” he says, turning back to his drink. A private little smirk pulls at his lips as he flicks at the straw with his fingertips. “He’s very, very…nice.”  
  
 _Ah_. Right.  
  
Jin keeps his eyes on his own drink, plays it cool like that. It’s fine, whatever, it’s not like he didn’t know.  
  
“Sorry,” Kame says, and when Jin looks up again the smirk has turned apologetic. “You probably don’t want to hear about that.”  
  
He doesn’t. But not for the reason Kame thinks.  
  
“No, it’s fine,” he says, shifting with a shrug, hoping it comes off more casual and sophisticated than it feels.  
  
“Really?” Kame says with a skeptical little frown. “I always got the feeling it sort of made you…uncomfortable.”  
  
“It doesn’t.” Jin shakes his head and shrugs, takes another sip of his drink.  
  
It totally does. But not for the reason Kame thinks.  
  
“Are you sure?” Kame says, leaning a little bit closer and craning his neck to peer up at him, and Jin isn’t facing him but he’s still not sure where to look. The fragmented mirror, which turns Kame into eight Kames when he leans across a fracture, is not helpful. “Because you’re making a very uncomfortable face.”  
  
“My shoes hurt,” Jin lies and scowls at his glass like it’s the drink’s fault.  
  
Kame laughs. It’s a beautiful sound.  
  
Finally he slides back into his own space, letting Jin off the hook.  
  
Sort of.  
  
“How about you and Meisa then? Still sexing it up like honeymooners, or does the kid thing change all that like they say?”  
  
Jin huffs a breath. “Nope, that was us. Against the rules.”  
  
Kame gives him a puzzled look, and Jin enjoys it for a bit as he mulls over a sip of gin.  
  
“We don’t actually have that kind of relationship,” he explains finally, setting the drink down and fiddling the little straw between two fingers. “Just the kid—no honeymoon.”  
  
Kame stares at him, looking somewhere between surprised and horrified. “Seriously?”  
  
“I’m not a monk,” Jin says, catching Kame’s reflection in the mirror, though Kame is still looking at him directly. “We date other people. It’s just a convenience thing. And there were career reasons too, but, well…those didn’t completely go to plan.”  
  
When Kame doesn’t say anything after a bit too long, Jin sneaks a glance at him over his shoulder. The stare just then is a little too…something. But Kame looks away again as soon as he sees Jin looking.  
  
“Wow,” he mumbles, swirling the ice in his glass and tilting his head, and his voice seems to stick a little. “Taguchi just lost a bet.”  
  
Jin raises eyebrows at him in the mirror.  
  
“Ueda said it was fake as soon as it happened,” Kame explains, a little half-smile tugging at his mouth. He sets the glass back down on the napkin and starts smoothing down the corners with his fingertips. “It did seem kind of fast, but I really…didn’t think it was fake.”  
  
“It’s not fake,” Jin says. “It’s just…unconventional.”  
  
Kame breathes a laugh, still fiddling with his napkin. “Well. When you put it that way, it does sound like you.”  
  
“You’re one to talk.”  
  
“Hey, I’m very conventional. I just…live by conventions that some people have trouble understanding.”  
  
Jin glances over and watches him polish off the last of his drink. Probably a little longer than he should, but, well.  
  
The alcohol is buzzing in his veins. He’s not really drunk, can’t afford to be when he’s got the morning shift tomorrow, but he’s feeling it now, just a little. It sort of dawns on him again that this is Kame sitting next to him, and they’re talking like normal people for the first time in years, and this doesn’t happen very often. Who knows when it will happen again.  
  
Maybe he should say something.  
  
 _I understand._  
  
“Ready to go?”  
  
It’s Hiroshi who speaks first, his hand brushing the back of Kame’s shoulder unobtrusively, and Jin feels that petty little roll in his stomach that he really shouldn’t feel, because this is always the way it was. Kame is happy with his conventional unconventions, and Jin is happy with his unconventional conventions, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be.  
  
Kame is sliding off his stool and straightening his jacket, checking his breast pocket for his phone, and he gives Hiroshi a little smile and nod when he offers to go get their coats, and he will disappear, and Jin will not see him again for months or years or decades.  
  
“Can I have your number?” he blurts out suddenly, and thank god Hiroshi is already heading for the coat check, because that definitely sounds weird. Even Kame gives him kind of an odd look.  
  
“Sorry, I just,” Jin fumbles, and he wants to take a sip of his drink, but that would be weird at this point. “I enjoyed catching up with you. It would be fun to hang out again sometime, if that’s okay.”  
  
It’s an old look—Kame trying to figure shit out. Looking at him like Jin’s just said something complicated when it’s actually pretty simple. Or it would be, if neither of them remembered all the other times.  
  
“Sure,” Kame says, after a moment. “Yeah, that’s fine.” He smiles a little, and then he fishes a business card out of his wallet and scribbles his private number on the back of it.  
  
He holds it out, and Jin stares at it for a moment before he remembers to take it. It seems too easy somehow.  
  
“Talk to you soon?” Kame says, his voice low, and Jin looks up again.  
  
“Yeah,” he nods. “Yes. Yeah, I’ll call you soon. We’ll figure out a time.”  
  
Kame smiles a little, and that’s old too. “I’d like that.”  
  
Jin watches him all the way to the door. When he looks down at the number in Kame’s scribbly handwriting on the card in his hand, he feels the smile from deep down.  
  
“Something good happen?” Meisa asks him later on the cab ride home. He’s still smiling, and she’s leaning against his shoulder sleepily, slightly drunker than he is. She has the morning off after all.  
  
“I think so,” he says.  
  
 _I hope so_.  
  
*      *      *  
  
“Are you sure it’s okay for me to be in here?” Jin asks.  
  
Kame laughs around another bite of his hot dog. Jin’s got a cardboard bowl of nachos with hot sauce balanced on his knees and his feet up on the railing of the box, and he’s licking cheese grease off his fingertips. The dome looks like a totally different place with all the lights and grass and stuff, and he doesn’t even really mind the baseball with Kame slouched down in his seat like that.  
  
“What, you think Johnny’s got cameras to detect any ex-idols who happen to wander into his box?”  
  
“No,” Jin drawls back, because Kame is an ass. “But there are, like, cameras  _around_ , aren’t there? Won’t you get in trouble if somebody sees me up here?”  
  
Kame waves a hand at that, wiping mustard off his lower lip with the napkin. “Don’t worry about it, we’re allowed to bring guests as long as the thing is empty. You’re my guest.”  
  
“Ah,” Jin says, nodding and poking at his nachos with the fork again, trying to dig another piece free. It still feels weird being here, like he’s some kind of spy or something. But maybe that’s just because Kame is sitting next to him.  
  
“I’ve got to say,” Kame says, dropping his eyes to his lap and picking a few little bits of relish out of the side of his cardboard bowl, dropping them back onto the hotdog, “I didn’t really think we’d ever be here again. You and me.”  
  
Jin looks over at him. Waits. As long as it takes, until Kame looks over too and cracks a little smile.  
  
“Yeah, me neither,” Jin says, smiling back. Then he gestures out at the field. “I don’t get what you see in all this stuff though. Looks way better with the stage and the lights and the fireworks and shit.”  
  
Kame laughs. “Yeah, well, they tried it that way, but the players complained about Ueda beating them when they ran circuits around the walkways.”  
  
“By ‘the players,’ you totally mean you, right?”  
  
“Look who’s talking,” Kame remarks, slanting him a look.  
  
Jin just makes an innocent, wounded face and stuffs another loaded nacho in his mouth.  
  
*      *      *  
  
“Okay, so, seriously,” Jin says during the bottom of the eighth inning. The nachos and hot dogs are finished, and they’ve made their way through a couple more rounds of beers from the built-in bar. And the Swallows are losing so horribly by now that even Kame isn’t really paying attention to the game anymore. “How are things? I mean, with you guys, with all the…stuff. I didn’t totally follow all of it, things were kind of crazy for me then, but…yeah.”  
  
Kame frowns a little, tilting his beer thoughtfully. His feet have joined Jin’s on the box railing at some point in the last hour as well, and he looks pretty much like he could be sitting in his own living room at home not-watching the game on TV. “We’re actually doing okay, I think,” he says after a bit. “I mean, it was really  _weird_  at first, not like—”  
  
He glances up quickly, looking a little guilty for what he almost said—and Jin knows. Jin gets it—it’s not the same. In hindsight, Jin leaving seemed kind of…inevitable, maybe, like a slow-motion train crash, but Koki. Yeah. Not like it didn’t make sense too, in a way, and there were probably warning signs, but it just…he really never saw it coming. Not like that. Totally fair point.  
  
“Sorry,” Kame says. “I didn’t mean it like it sounds.”  
  
“I know,” Jin says, nodding a little. Picking at the corner of his beer label. Totally cool, Kame’s right, and it  _is_  a fair point anyway.  
  
He still feels Kame looking at him, but he just takes another sip of his beer.  
  
Kame sighs and turns back to the game. Rests his head against the back of the seat, and his beer against the armrest. The pitcher guy throws another pitch, and the crowd cheers halfheartedly when it smacks into the catcher’s mitt.  
  
“I guess I was used to losing you,” Kame says.  
  
Jin looks over again, and this time it’s Kame fiddling with his beer, turning it against the padded armrest, little smears of condensation darkening the red fibers.  
  
Kame shrugs one shoulder, not quite casually, and Jin feels Kame’s elbow bump his on the armrest between them. “It had happened often enough by then—I guess in a way I figured it was only a matter of time until it happened again. And you were so…” he glances over again, only briefly this time. Eyes flicking away again as he sorts out the words. “It was bad timing all around. It almost seemed like maybe that would be better for everybody. A clean break.”  
  
 _Better for you_ , Jin hears.  
  
A part of him even wants to disagree, but another part can’t. Maybe it was better for him. Maybe it was what he needed to do, and couldn’t. Not without a push, anyway.  
  
Still. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t miss it.  
  
There’s a crack, and the home supporters cheer as the tiny little ball arcs across the dome, bouncing across the grass near the far wall as the defending players scramble to get ahold of it.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Jin blurts out.  
  
Kame gives him kind of an odd look. “Sorry for what?”  
  
What. Hmm…yeah, that’s a pretty good question. Jin sifts through his mind, brushes away a handful of half-formed thoughts and things that don’t make sense, things he’d need to sort out for himself before he’d have any hope of explaining them.  
  
“I’m sorry I let you go.”  
  
There’s a little blink, a twitch of eyebrow and a steady look, and Jin is tempted to look away, but he doesn’t. There are other things, bigger things, older things pressing against the inside of his chest—but they’re not safe, and he knows that. They make him do crazy things, and they make him lose stuff that matters, and right now all he wants is to make this work—again. Maybe not like before, or before that, but maybe nothing stays the same forever, and maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s all forever really is, just a long series of start-agains.  
  
Kame breathes a little laugh and glances down, nudging Jin’s elbow a little more deliberately this time. “That’s funny,” he mumbles. “I thought I was the one who did that.”  
  
*       *       *  
  
It’s well past dark by the time he lets himself into the apartment. It’s dark on the inside too, and he tries not to make too much noise taking off his shoes in the entryway—Theia sleeps pretty well these days, but when she does wake up in the middle of the night she gets really clingy and cranky and takes a long time to get back to sleep, and it sort of throws her off for the whole day. Doesn’t do Jin and Meisa any favors either.  
  
There’s one light on in the kitchen, right above the counter, and Jin finds a note clipped to the little note-clippy-stand they keep on the counter.  
  
 _Just a heads up, we’re out of milk, so don’t promise her anything with breakfast—I’ll get more on my way home tomorrow. Hope you had a good night!_  
  
 _—M_  
  
He plucks the note out of the stand and flips it over, picking one of the pens out of the mug by the phone.  
  
 _Got in late—knock on my door if I’m not up in time. Night!_  
  
 _—J_  
  
He clips the note into the stand again and flicks off the light, fumbling a little bit in the darker darkness as he finds his way down the hall. They had a few more beers after the game at a little pub in some out of the way neighborhood Kame knew of—cabs the whole way, Jin doesn’t even know where he’s been all evening, but he doesn’t care. He can still hear the crowd, still see the lights reflecting off the ceiling of the dome. Still feel Kame’s elbow brushing against his, stealing too much of the armrest for a bit and then gradually giving it back.  
  
The glow is still there, thrumming underneath his skin, and he’s not sure how much of it is beer and how much of it is Kame. Seeing him again, seeing him  _smile_  again, real again, and it’s like…coming home, or something. And something else too.  
  
He drops his jacket on the bed, peels off his t-shirt and his jeans. The socks come last, socks are tricky on this many beers, and he stumbles into the dresser when he misjudges the reach, winces as it thumps against the wall. Waits, but…no sound. Still good. Cool.  
  
He turns on the shower. It’s chilly outside, and the heat feels good, warms him even more than the beers, gets the blood flowing. He tilts his face up into the spray and lets it batter his closed eyes, and his nose, and his mouth. Feels it like fingers in his hair, little trails curling their way down his back and over his shoulders and chest. And everywhere.  
  
Kame smiles more now. Smiles easier, quicker—deeper, like it’s really okay. Like he doesn’t have to, and he doesn’t have to think about it. Maybe some things are like they used to be. Maybe some things even get better.  
  
He feels the pull when he thinks of Kame’s elbow, Kame’s eyes, Kame’s face leaning in towards his, little murmurs in his ear about that bartender over there, how he’s got his shirt on inside out, speculation on the quickie he probably just had in the storage room with the red-headed waitress, and Jin doesn’t really even think about it. Wraps his hand around it and sinks into it, leans his elbow against the cool tile and thinks of Kame’s voice. Thinks of Kame.  
  
It’s not even the bar anymore, not really anywhere, but Kame is there too, hard too, and maybe it’s his hand now. Maybe those harsh breaths are his, the trembles too, and Jin gets harder, feels the buzz spreading to the ends of his fingers because it’s been so long, and he doesn’t know anymore why he stopped.  
  
Kame is wet too, fingers in Jin’s hair and water trailing down his body like a hundred TV screens except there’s only one, and he says Jin’s name, kisses Jin’s neck and says his  _name_ …  
  
*      *      *

It’s a little bit bright in the living room. Jin scratches his hair away from his face and squints over at the windows—Meisa always opens them first thing, says the sunlight gives her energy or something, and usually Jin doesn’t really mind, but at the moment he’s feeling a tiny bit…under the weather. Not horrible, he’s had worse, and he can totally handle a few beers. But just, you know, maybe not full-force-of-the-sun good.  
  
He picks up the remote from the dining table and closes one of the curtains, leaves the other one open as a compromise. Theia is already sitting in her highchair making interesting patterns in her applesauce and babbling an explanation to herself. She looks up at the sound of the blinds and gives him a wide smile. He smiles back, because hey, there’s a kind of sunlight he can handle in the mornings.  
  
“Hey sweetie,” he says, bending down to kiss her on top of the head and pick a drop of applesauce out of her hair.  
  
“Good morning!” Meisa says brightly, waving from the kitchen.  
  
No fair, she’s had coffee already.  
  
Jin heads in to check the pot, see if there’s still enough for him or if he needs to start a second batch already. It’s still warm, still has weight when he pulls at the handle.  
  
“Late night, huh?”  
  
The jolt is weird. Kind of sneaks up on him, scattering images and sensations in its wake, and he feels sort of caught, sort of exposed, until he remembers that she doesn’t actually know. And also, he didn’t do anything wrong. There’s no actual difference between jerking off over a guy and jerking off over a girl, and anyway all of that is totally fine, totally his business, totally part of the deal.  
  
Would she think so? If she knew?  
  
Jin grabs one of the mugs off the shelf and fills it to the brim. He’s careful when he brings it to his lips, but the coffee’s been sitting around long enough. Doesn’t burn even when he takes a long sip.  
  
Guys. They talked about girls, but they never talked about guys—it didn’t even occur to him at the time, didn’t seem relevant. Jin has never done that here. Well. Not  _really_ , just…that one time, when they almost. But even that was years ago, and it didn’t seem like it was going to matter again, and maybe it still doesn’t. Matter. He’s not actually seriously  _considering_  or anything, it was just…thoughts. In his head. Thinking thoughts.  
  
About Kame.  
  
“You okay?”  
  
He gives a start, nearly spills coffee on his t-shirt and has to set down the mug then and grab a towel to mop up the little drip on the floor. “Uh, yeah. Sure. Sorry, just kind of…slow morning.”  
  
She nods at that like it’s not a surprise, like she even thinks it’s sort of cute, and he feels the blush burning down his throat as he straightens up again. Hopes she won’t ask, hopes she’ll just think it’s because he’s clumsy and hungover, because he doesn’t know what he wants to say to her about the other thing. Wonders how badly she’d freak if he told her—told her all of it—and then stops wondering right there, because he’s got a whole day ahead of him and there are babysitters to deal with and meetings to go to and he really doesn’t need that sneaking up on him every twenty minutes.  
  
“Okay, well, Keiko-chan will be here at eleven—you’re cool till then right?”  
  
“Yeah,” Jin says, nodding and picking up his mug again. “Yeah, of course—no problem. Hey—”  
  
Meisa stops and turns back again, pulling her hair out from underneath her purse strap. She looks expectant.  
  
He’s not really sure why he’s hesitating.  
  
“Just, I was wondering—would you mind if I invite Kame over for dinner sometime? Like, the three of us—maybe sometime next week?”  
  
Her eyebrows raise a little bit, and Jin has to remind himself that’s just her thinking face. It’s not anything. She wouldn’t know from just that.  
  
“Yeah, sure,” she says after a bit. “That would be fine. I’m filming late on Monday and Tuesday, but maybe Thursday or something?”  
  
“Sure,” Jin nods, looking down at his coffee cup. “Cool, sure—I’ll see if he’s free. Thanks.”  
  
“It’ll be fun,” she smiles. “Okay, I’m off though—bye!”  
  
“Bye.”  
  
*      *      *  
  
The table is set but the roast is burning when the doorbell rings.  
  
“Shit.”  
  
There’s still stuff everywhere. It’s ten minutes after eight, and he meant to have Theia down half an hour ago, but the bath took longer than usual and he forgot about his half of the dinner in the oven and now the doorbell is ringing and he’s stuck halfway between the playpen and the kitchen.  
  
“Doorbell,” Meisa calls from the kitchen, over the sizzle of a frying pan.  
  
Kitchen.  
  
“I know, just—hang on, can you let me—”  
  
She scoots out of the way to let him reach across for the controls, turn a couple of dials and pull open the oven. Still looks…probably okay. Not like he’s any kind of master chef, and his mother did say this was a foolproof recipe.  
  
Meisa bends down to look with him.  
  
“Still edible?” he asks her.  
  
She nods. “Maybe a little well-done around the edges, but I don’t think we’ll give him food poisoning.”  
  
“Good enough.” He slams the oven shut just as the doorbell rings again, and he’s dropping the oven mitts on the counter as he strides quickly toward the door.  
  
He’s stopped along the way by a pitiful whine that sounds vaguely like “Daddy,” and Theia in her red longjohns stretching her arms up toward him in supplication and—okay, one sec.  
  
He hoists her up into his arms and tucks her against his shoulder, her arms curling automatically around his neck. He winces as he feels her wipe her runny nose on the collar of his clean shirt, but, well…what are you going to do. Kame knows he’s not coming to dinner at the Imperial Palace.  
  
He just catches the edge of Kame’s little frown when he opens the door before it brightens into a smile. “Hi!” Kame says. “Sorry—am I early?”  
  
“No, you’re totally fine,” Jin reassures him with a little shake of his head, bouncing a little and patting Theia’s back as she calms herself against his shoulder. “We’re just running a little late.”  
  
“Ah,” Kame says, and there’s a little startled blink there when he notices, sees Theia peering at him over her shoulder, and Jin realizes maybe he should have left her in the playpen, given Kame a bit of warning before…  
  
“Hey there,” Kame says, turning on the charm. “My name is Kamenashi Kazuya. You must be Theia.”  
  
She blinks at him for a moment. Then she squirms and buries her face in Jin’s neck again, and Kame laughs.  
  
“Sorry,” Jin says, stepping aside to let Kame take off his coat and shoes. “She gets sort of shy around strangers when she’s sleepy.”  
  
“My niece is the same way,” Kame says. “She met this guy I was seeing once and made a face so horrified he was afraid he’d traumatized her for life. Here,” he lifts the bottle of wine he’s carrying, which Jin has only just noticed. “I realize you’ve sort of got your hands full at the moment, but…”  
  
“In the kitchen,” Jin says with a little smile and a nod in the right direction. “Thanks. Meisa can take it off your hands.”  
  
“Is there anything I can do to help?”  
  
Jin shakes his head quickly. “You really don’t need to.”  
  
“I don’t mind.”  
  
“Well…in that case you might be able to help Meisa repair the damage of my cooking. I’ll be right back—I just have to put this one to bed.”  
  
Kame smiles down at Theia again—a real one this time, not even like he’s trying to win her over. It makes Jin feel a little rush of pride, Kame looking like that at this little monster Jin made. He smiles back, watching him.  
  
Then Theia’s fist twitches sleepily where it’s clutching the front of his shirt and accidentally pinches his nipple with fingernails that should really be clipped sometime soon, and he has to squirm and bite back a curse.  
  
“You okay?” Kame laughs.  
  
Jin winces, rubbing his chest. “She’s stronger than she looks.”  
  
It takes him all of ten minutes to get her down to sleep and make sure the crib is safe and the monitor is turned on. He makes a brief stop by his room to trade his shirt for a snot-free one, and by the time he’s back out in the living room, the food is out on the table and the toys that had been scattered all over the floor are neatly collected inside the playpen.  
  
“You made him clean up?” Jin accuses in a low murmur as Meisa leans over to fill the water glasses.  
  
“He offered,” she says. “The dinner was basically finished.”  
  
“I know, but still—”  
  
“Relax, okay? He’s an old friend, and he wanted to help. Stop acting like your mother.”  
  
“I am  _not_  acting like my—”  
  
Kame falters when he realizes they’ve stopped talking the moment he’s walked in with the open wine bottle. “Am I interrupting?” he asks, looking uncertainly from one to the other of them. “I can go back in the kitchen if you want.”  
  
“No!” Jin says, too loud, and Kame gives him a bemused look.  
  
Fortunately, Meisa is smarter than he is. And probably a little less jittery. “Jin is just fretting about not following the proper etiquette for the evening. I’ve already told him he’s being an idiot, but you can tell him yourself if you want.”  
  
The little frown between Kame’s brows disappears at that, and the smile comes back, which Jin likes. Weirdly, he doesn’t really mind that they’re both laughing at him, as long as it makes Kame smile like that.  
  
“Jin?” Kame says as he pours wine into one of the glasses from the table.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
Kame offers him the glass. “You’re being an idiot.”  
  
*      *      *  
  
“That one…” Meisa says, waving a hand in the air as she searches for the thought. She’s got her wine glass in the other hand, one foot curled up underneath her on the loveseat and a scrunchy frown between her brows. “You know, the—with the hair. And he has really bad breath…”  
  
“Ichinose!” Kame says, pointing at her, and she points back.  
  
“Yes! Oh my god, that was awful. I mean he’s a nice enough guy, but…”  
  
“It wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t stand so close to you when he’s giving you notes.”  
  
“You got that too? I thought maybe he only did that with the women.”  
  
Kame grimaces. “Not exactly, no.”  
  
Jin glances back and forth between the two of them from his own corner of the couch and tries not to feel superfluous. Or trapped. Or fidget too much. It’s gotten better now that he’s got a few drinks in him, and it’s not like anything’s going wrong or anything—they’re getting along great. And he knew they would—why wouldn’t they? Kame has known her longer than Jin has. Probably not so well by now, but…yeah. He’s not even sure what he’s afraid of.  
  
He takes another sip of his wine and tries to make it settle again.  
  
They got through dinner. Kame liked the roast, or he said he did anyway, and Jin doesn’t mind that much if he was lying—it was the nice kind. And Meisa’s jambalaya was great, and they didn’t knock over any bottles or set anything on fire with the little candle in a jar Meisa brought out to make things look festive, and that’s exactly the kind of thing Kame would do if Jin were having dinner at his place and Kame were cooking for him and they were…okay, that’s a weird thought.  
  
“You remember Nakamura, right?” Kame says, and his foot stretches just a little to poke Jin in the knee, and Jin jolts. Looks at Meisa, but she’s pondering something in her wine, and Kame…Kame looks like he noticed but he’s not letting Jin see. His foot draws back to his side of the couch though.  
  
Jin blinks and clears his throat, tries to get his heartbeat under control again, because he’s the only one being weird here and it’s starting to show. Maybe the drinks were a bad idea after all. “What—I—Nakamaru?”  
  
Kame grins at him. “Not Nakamaru—Naka _mura_. That AD from Gokusen. You wanted to steal his shoes.”  
  
“The orange ones?” Fuck, he forgot about those. They were really cool. He should actually have a look around again, there’s got to be something like that online somewhere…  
  
Kame nods. “That’s the one. Actually, he’s a program coordinator now.”  
  
“How do you know that?” Jin says, incredulous. Hell,  _he_  hasn’t been in contact with Kame for like five years, and Kame’s keeping track of AD guys from things from ten years ago?  
  
Kame gives him a brief look. “We were in touch for a while. A few years ago.”  
  
There’s that shrively feeling again. Jin is almost getting used to it now. Not so keen on the orange shoes anymore though, all of a sudden.  
  
“Oh. That’s cool,” he says. And then he takes another drink from his wine glass, hoping someone else will pick up the subject he’s just dropped.  
  
Meisa takes up the cue with her story about the time one of the trunks fell off the wardrobe truck and she had to film a whole scene on location standing around in the grass in her stocking feet. Jin laughs when he’s supposed to even though he’s heard it before and tries a little more wine—but his mind is still stuck on ADs and orange shoes.  
  
Which is…okay, he knows that’s ridiculous—it was  _years_  ago, and it’s not even the point. But it’s just enough to remind him, make him wonder. What he’s doing here. What he actually expects to accomplish with this. This isn’t baseball, this is Kame coming home to meet his family, sitting around chatting and having drinks with his  _wife_ , and he really doesn’t…  
  
Kame is having a nice time. Meisa is having a nice time. Jin is having…a weird time, but he likes that they get along—he thinks. He’s always been a bit weird about that, and there’s a childish little part of him that kind of wants to put them in separate rooms and make them only talk to him, just like the way he used to be with Kame and Pi, but that’s…not it either. He  _likes_  that they get along. It’s a good thing. He likes that Kame can be a part of his life again—his whole life.  
  
But that’s not it.  
  
Meisa sets her glass down on the coffee table and uncurls herself from the loveseat. Jin didn’t hear what she said, but she’s headed down the hallway, and soon he hears the door to Theia’s room open and quietly shut.  
  
Kame fiddles his wine glass a little between his fingers, looks comfortable and relaxed and a little bit flushed from the alcohol, and Jin sort of wishes his foot would sneak back over here again. But he’s got them on the floor now, stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles.  
  
“Good wine,” Jin says, tilting his mostly empty glass.  
  
Kame smiles. “One of my favorites. I always keep it around the house.”  
  
“Yeah, it’s really…you know, good.”  
  
Kame laughs at him, and Jin…doesn’t really mind.  
  
He looks happy. Not just, like, right-in-this-moment happy— _happy_  happy. Like his life just sort of works now, the way it sometimes didn’t before. Jin remembers.  
  
He remembers times when Kame wasn’t happy. He’s not sure he ever really saw it that way at the time, never spelled it out to himself in so many words, and he had his own stuff going on. But somehow it’s easier to see now, at a distance.  
  
It’s a good thing. It’s  _good_  that he’s happy now, it really is, he just…  
  
ADs and guitar players and cinematographers.  
  
Jin glances down at his wine glass again. “How’s Hiroshi?” he asks, because it’s only polite, and maybe that’s a good reminder too.  
  
Kame gives him a curious look. “Fine. I guess, I don’t know—I haven’t seen him in a few weeks.”  
  
“Oh, right. Is he filming or something?”  
  
“No…” Kame is giving him another curious look, and Jin tries to return it with a little smile that says it’s all cool. They can talk about things, really. “I mean, I don’t know, he might be—I just haven’t been in touch with him.”  
  
“Oh? Did something happen?”  
  
Kame shakes his head vaguely, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “Jin, I’m not—we aren’t in a relationship. Hiroshi is just a friend.”  
  
Jin blinks.  
  
Wait, what? That isn’t…that is  _definitely_  not what he said the last time. “You’re—but. I thought you said you two were…”  
  
Kame smiles a little. “I did. But I didn’t mean we were in a  _relationship_. I actually…” He trails off, fiddling with his wine glass again.  
  
“What?”  
  
Kame presses his lips together. “I don’t really do relationships anymore,” he admits.  
  
Oh. That’s…oh.  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“It just got too hard, I guess,” Kame says, shrugging a shoulder. “I’m too busy, and the business…” He gestures vaguely, but Jin knows exactly what he means. He’s even out of it now, and it still catches up with him sometimes. “And I don’t know, it never seemed to be worth it.”  
  
“Yeah,” Jin says. “Yeah, I…know what you mean.”  
  
Not that…well. He’s had his phases where he wasn’t really that interested, sure, but he’s never—he can’t really imagine just saying “never again” like that, and it’s really kind of… _sad_ , when he thinks about it, that Kame would really…  
  
But. The business part. That…yeah.  
  
Kame glances over at him, then around at the room with a little laugh. “Yeah. I guess you do, don’t you.”  
  
“It’s not off-limits,” Jin says, picking up his meaning. “With her and me, we don’t—we’re allowed to have relationships with other people, it doesn’t have to be just sex, or whatever. But, yeah…with the press, and everything…”  
  
“Yeah,” Kame says.  
  
And then they both kind of sigh into their drinks at the same time—and Jin snorts a laugh. God, what a couple of sad sacks. He glances over at Kame, and he’s laughing too—and it’s really, really nice to see that at the other end of his couch again. Kame laughing.  
  
Kame happy.  
  
Kame is finishing his wine just as Meisa comes back into the living room. “More?” she asks, noticing the empty glass. “I think we killed that bottle, but we can open another one.”  
  
Kame shakes his head and puts his glass down on the coffee table. “I really shouldn’t—I was up pretty early this morning. I should actually probably get going.”  
  
“You can sleep here if you want,” Jin says, thinking of Kame driving across town on not enough sleep and too much alcohol. “There’s a foldout couch in my studio, it’s really not a problem.”  
  
Kame shakes his head. “No, it’s alright—I took a cab. Anyway, I’ve got another appointment in the morning, and I don’t want to wake anyone.”  
  
“Are you sure? It’s really okay.”  
  
“Really,” Kame nods firmly, and then he gets to his feet and stretches, starts looking around for his coat.  
  
Jin walks ahead of him into the entryway and finds his coat for him, helping him into it and watching him fiddle on his shoes. He looks a little unsteady, but mostly in a lazy, sleepy sort of way, similar to what Jin is feeling. When he gets the second shoe on and straightens, Kame finds Jin watching him and smiles.  
  
“This was really nice,” he says, looking back at Jin in that way he sometimes does that makes Jin wonder what he’s thinking. Makes him want to fill in the blanks with all sorts of dangerous things, but he knows better than that after all these years.  
  
“It was,” Jin agrees. “We should do it again sometime.”  
  
“Absolutely. You guys can come over to my place and I’ll cook for you. Theia too—I’d love to meet her again when she’s awake.” There’s a little grin there.  
  
Jin wrinkles his nose. “Yeah. She’s a lot cuter when she’s awake.”  
  
“I don’t know. She was pretty cute just the way she was.”  
  
It’s that little glow again. He sort of wants to lean over and hug Kame goodbye, but he thinks that’s probably the alcohol’s idea and not a very good one under the circumstances.  
  
Kame shifts toward the door. “Well.”  
  
“Yeah. I’ll call you, we’ll figure out a time.”  
  
“Sure,” Kame nods. “Absolutely, do that. And we’re still on for next Tuesday, right?”  
  
“Definitely. I’ll see you then.”  
  
“Okay,” Kame nods and smiles again. “Bye.”  
  
“Bye.”  
  
The apartment seems quieter and smaller again once Kame leaves.  
  
It’s a few moments before Jin notices the sound of running water in the kitchen and realizes Meisa’s not in the living room anymore. She must have started on the dishes by herself.  
  
He goes over to the dining table and gathers up the last few pieces of silverware, stacking them all on one plate and fiddling with the order of things to see if he can carry it all in one trip. Then he brings them into the kitchen and adds them to the collection by the sink.  
  
The sink space isn’t really convenient for more than one person to work at at a time, so he leaves Meisa to the dishes and starts sorting away all the bottles and jars left out from their cooking adventures. When he gets the center island mostly cleared off, he reaches past Meisa to wet a dish cloth so he can wipe down the surfaces as he goes. There’s nothing really that messy, but it’s habit these days, and there will be breakfast in the morning. Might as well start with a clean slate.  
  
He still feels nervous.  
  
All of it went fine. It’s all over, the dinner didn’t poison anybody, there were nice drinks and conversation, and Jin…is still nervous.  
  
He scratches at a spot on the granite with the dishcloth and he thinks about ADs and arrangements and Kame’s foot. And the way he almost leaned in, and he’s not completely, one-hundred-percent sure that Kame wouldn’t have leaned back. And it’s not—he’s not _hoping_ , he doesn’t even know if he wants that, really, but there’s…there are things. Going on. Things that haven’t been an issue in a really long time, but that might be again, and if he doesn’t…  
  
It’s a while before he realizes he’s not even pretending to be focused on the counter anymore. He’s just standing there crumpling the wet rag between his fingers and staring at Meisa’s back as she tips a stream of water out of the baking pan into the sink.  
  
“Um. Meisa?”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“Can I talk to you for a sec?”  
  
She glances back over her shoulder. A little frown twitches across her face when she sees his expression. “Yeah, sure,” she says, setting the pan in the dish drainer. “What about?”  
  
“I just…you said you wanted me to tell you. If I ever felt like things might need to…change. With us.”  
  
She takes that in. Then she gives a little nod and turns back to the sink just long enough to turn it off, and grabs a dishtowel from the counter to dry her hands. “Okay,” she says, nodding a few more times and leaning back against the counter. “Okay.”  
  
“It’s nothing scary,” Jin says quickly, because he feels like he’s already fucking this up, and that’s not what he wants. “I’m not saying this doesn’t work for me or anything, I still like things the way they are, I just…there’s. Something. I need to talk to you about something. I need to know what you think.”  
  
The frown twitches again, but she doesn’t interrupt. Just nods for him to continue. She knows he’ll get the words out eventually.  
  
Now he just needs to figure out what they are.  
  
“So, I know we talked about the other people thing—you with other men, and me with other women. And that’s fine, we’re both…we’re totally cool with that— _I’m_  cool with that. But I just…for me, there’s this other…thing.”  
  
She looks confused. And no wonder.  
  
Right. So, maybe fewer words and more sentences.  
  
“Sometimes I’m kind of into guys.”  
  
Her eyebrows raise. Juuust slightly. Whatever she was expecting, it apparently wasn’t that. She blinks and stares at him, and her hands are still folded into the dishtowel. “Oh.”  
  
That’s…not bad? She doesn’t sound horrified or disgusted or anything, so that’s…probably good. Jin swallows. “So, I guess I was just wondering— _theoretically_ —if I were…thinking about being with a guy, is that… Would you be okay with that?”  
  
She blinks again. There’s a little bit of confusion there, but she still doesn’t look horrified, and he made it pretty clear what he’s asking, so…hopefully good. “Of course,” she says, a little shakily, but still like she thinks he should know better. “I mean, I’m not…I can’t tell you it wouldn’t  _surprise_  me, or whatever, but it’s not like I’d have a problem with it. The rules are the same.”  
  
Jin breathes again.  
  
“Did you really think I would tell you no?” Meisa looks almost hurt, and Jin feels a little guilty and a little stupid.  
  
“No,” he says. “No, I just…I don’t know. I’ve never really talked about this with anyone before, and you and I—our arrangement, or whatever—it’s just complicated. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable and fuck things up.”  
  
“I’m not uncomfortable with that,” she says, fiddling the dishtowel between her fingers. “I think it’s great—I mean, if that’s what you want, I think you should go for it.”  
  
Jin nods. His mouth feels a little bit dry, and he’s not sure if that’s relief or just the aftershocks of actually…telling someone. Someone important. And she thinks it’s great.  
  
Jin still doesn’t know what he thinks.  
  
“Is it Kamenashi?”  
  
It gives him a jolt, and he looks up at her again. She’s still watching him quietly, a little bit inscrutably. She does seem fine, really, not mad or freaked out, just a little…quiet. Thoughtful.  
  
He has to run his tongue over his lips to give an answer. “Yeah. Maybe. I mean, I don’t actually know how he…but. Yeah.”  
  
Meisa nods. Files that away too, and folds the dishtowel a little more neatly between her hands.  
  
“I think that’s great,” she says, with a little smile.  
  
*      *      *


	9. 2015

_Winter_  
  
“Shit,” Jin hisses when the little clippy thing holding all the cords together at the back of the bluray player snaps shut on his finger again. He pulls it out and shakes his hand, checking for blood. Last thing he needs is to…get electrocuted or something by bleeding all over the HDMI input and closing a circuit.  
  
“Did you try unplugging it and then plugging it back in again?” Kame asks. He’s standing over Jin’s shoulder, watching him work with his arms crossed over his chest and a yes-I-totally-know-what-I’m-talking-about look on his face, and he’s completely full of shit.  
  
“It’s your player—does that usually work when it does this?”  
  
“It’s never done this before.”  
  
Jin makes a face at him and then turns back to the player, pulling it a little further out of the entertainment unit so he can actually get a look at the back of it. He unplugs a couple more things and then plugs them back in again—accidentally replugs two of the cables the wrong way around and switches them back again—but when he pushes the power button again the panel on the front still just blinks a bunch of random letters that don’t even make a word, in Japanese or English.  
  
“You didn’t buy this thing at IKEA or something, did you?”  
  
“No,” Kame says, glancing from him to the player again. “Why?”  
  
“Nevermind,” Jin pushes the player back onto the shelf and sits back on his heels. “Well, maybe we don’t have to watch a movie.”  
  
“No, hang on—come on, there’s another player in the bedroom,” Kame says, nodding towards the door.  
  
“But, the pizza—”  
  
“We can eat it in there,” Kame says, stacking the plates and napkins on top of the pizza box. Jin stares at him as he then actually picks  _up_ the pizza box and walks toward the bedroom. With the pizza box. The pizza box that  _has pizza in it_.  
  
“Okay, who are you and what have you done with Kamenashi Kazuya?”  
  
Kame laughs.  
  
Jin pulls together the drinks while Kame is spreading a big beach towel over the duvet to act like a picnic blanket. He’s starting to learn where things are again—doesn’t even have to think much to find the glasses, choose a nice whisky. The first time he was over here it was sort of awkward, being in this space that was Kame’s that he’d never seen before—not that he’d expected it to look exactly like his old place, but, still. That time it was just a beer, stopping off for a few minutes before they went out to a movie. The time after that was the soccer match on TV, because it was Kame’s turn to be bored and Jin’s turn to not pay attention to the score. Which was just as well, because his guys scored two own-goals in the second half and nearly gave up a third. That was the night Jin learned where the liquor cabinet was.  
  
Tonight, it’s movie night.  
  
The pizza is really good, and the movie isn’t bad either. Kind of slow at first, but it gets funnier after a few drinks, and Kame isn’t even minding the subtitles. The subs are weird, kind of clunky and not translated that well, but Kame is still laughing in all the right places, so they must be okay.  
  
Then Jin catches Kame chuckling at a joke about pro-wrestling holds while he’s turned away from the TV fiddling with the scotch bottle, and it makes Jin…wonder.  
  
“You understand the English, don’t you?” he says in English.  
  
Kame looks up. He looks a little startled and…kind of embarrassed. It’s cute.  
  
“A little,” Kame says, setting the bottle back on the nightstand and slumping against the pillows again. They moved the mostly empty pizza box to the floor to make room for their feet, and Jin has his tucked under the beach towel because they got cold once he stretched out.  
  
It takes Jin a moment to realize he actually answered in English. Even the L was right.  
  
It does funny things to his insides, just the sound of that.  
  
“When did that happen?” Jin says, switching back to Japanese.  
  
Kame fiddles with his glass and smiles again, still a little bit of red in his cheeks. “I don’t know, sort of gradually. I had a few projects where I needed to speak it, and there were people speaking it all around me, and I just started to…pick stuff up. Some stuff.”  
  
“I spent a whole afternoon just trying to teach you to say ‘surprisingly’. What the  _fuck_ , Kamenashi…?”  
  
Kame laughs and slides further down against the pillows, ice cubes sloshing in his glass. “I’m sorry, okay? Some of us are late-bloomers. We can’t all be language prodigies like ‘Jin Akanishi,’” he says, dropping his voice into a swoopy parody of an American accent.  
  
Jin leans over him, mock-glaring down at him. “You’re a little shit, you know that?”  
  
Kame just laughs again.  
  
Jin stays there watching him until the laugh sort of dies away, and Kame is just looking back at him, and Jin… He can’t look away. His head feels fuzzy, and he can’t read Kame as well as he probably should right now. Kame blinks a bit, like maybe he’s thinking the same thing.  
  
Or maybe that’s just it. Jin can’t read him, maybe Kame is just…  
  
Jin leans further over and sets his glass down on Kame’s nightstand, and then he scoots down next to Kame and tucks his head against Kame’s shoulder. He feels Kame tense underneath him when he loops an arm around Kame’s ribcage, but Kame doesn’t say anything, so Jin doesn’t either. He’s not really sure what he’s doing. Somewhere far away he knows it’s a pretty bold move given that now is not then and he is not a clueless twenty-year-old anymore and this is  _different_ , but it’s too far away for him to care. It puts a little curl in his stomach, somewhere halfway between happy and slightly queasy, and maybe…maybe it’s a horrible idea, maybe this is just fucked up, maybe he’d even know why if he thought about it a little. But he doesn’t.  
  
Kame is warm. And Jin’s feet are still cold, and Kame speaks English now and eats pizza in bed and his shoulder feels just the same as it did ten years ago, except completely different.  
  
They’re quiet for a while as they go back to watching the movie. It’s not so funny anymore, on to the part where the guy realizes he’s fucked everything up and he just wants to make it better again, undo all the crazy. Jin starts to feel sleepy, and Kame’s breathing seems kind of shallow and careful. After a while, Jin feels Kame’s arm come around his shoulders and rest there lightly as he falls asleep.  
  
*      *      *  
  
It’s pretty dark. The TV must have turned itself off eventually, after the movie ended. There’s a little light from somewhere, but it’s quiet, and it’s warm, and mostly Jin can’t see anything except the outline of the chair by the window, and Kame’s crooked nose by the light of the digital clock. He closes his eyes again and curls closer, feels Kame’s chest expand against his arm, and maybe Jin’s leg falls across his thigh a little, but that’s not important. Maybe Kame’s breath skates over Jin’s cheek, and that is, and Jin tilts his face up a little, toward the warmth. Just a little.  
  
Kame’s cheek is soft against his nose. There’s a light scrape of stubble against his lip when he tilts his chin again, and the breath comes quicker in his arms, warm body shifting against his, and he doesn’t even feel it like a thing when the stubble drags away and something soft, hot, slow takes its place. Jin just goes with it. Opens with it and feels the warm, lazy flow.  
  
There’s tongue. Stubble underneath his fingertips, and Jin pushes closer, pulls closer until there are fingers in his hair and a little breath, a mumbled sigh.  
  
Then Jin’s leg slides between and there’s the slight bulge against his hip, and the sigh turns into a gasp, the fingers curling tight, and Kame jolts.  
  
The kiss breaks. Jin can hear Kame breathing, feel it against his lips. See his eyes darting in the dark all confused and not quite focused and—  
  
“Jin—what—”  
  
“Shut up,” Jin mumbles, kissing him again sloppily, but it’s harder now when Kame is trying to talk.  
  
“What are you—”  
  
But Jin slides a hand down his side and puts it right between Kame’s legs, right where he knows Kame’s wanting him, because it can’t actually be that complicated and he doesn’t give a fuck anymore. This is easy. This is simple. Kame gasps and arches again when he does it, and Jin ducks his head and latches onto his neck, with just a little bit of bite.  
  
“I don’t want to talk,” Jin says, his voice rough as he mouths his way out to Kame’s ear. Kame squirms underneath him as Jin rubs his cock through the jeans, and both of those things are turning Jin on, and Jin just doesn’t care anymore. “I don’t want to think, I just…just fuck me, okay?”  
  
There’s a little choked sound and another ripple of Kame’s body.  
  
“I’m saying it,” Jin mumbles into his neck, groping him a little more. “I’m  _asking_  you to, just…do it.”  
  
Kame doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t really do anything either, even when Jin keeps kissing his neck, keeps rubbing him, and it sort of creeps in on him, how still he is, and—oh shit, what if—what if that was like—what if he actually  _doesn’t_ …  
  
Jin leans up a little bit. Stops moving his hand and swallows. Kame is staring up at him in the dark, and Jin can’t tell what he’s thinking, what’s going on, what—  
  
He opens his mouth to say it’s fine, say he doesn’t mean to push, say he just thought maybe…  
  
“Please,” he shudders out.  
  
That’s it. Kame’s fingers go tight in his hair, so tight, and Kame surges up against him. The kiss is hard, sharp with teeth, but Jin feels it all the way down his spine. All the way along his body where Kame pushes up against him, wraps an arm around Jin’s waist and pushes them over, and for a moment it’s a freefall, and then it’s not. Then it’s heavy, close, Kame above him with his hips pressed tight to Jin’s, kissing him like this is the way it was always supposed to be. Jin tries to keep up, but Kame’s got the lead now, and that’s fine with him, that’s good with him, and so is the gasp when he slides his hands down to Kame’s ass and pulls him even closer.  
  
Kame is pulling Jin’s shirt up his sides, and Jin lets him get it over his head. Feels almost cold for a moment, but Kame is still moving around above him, and when he comes back down his shirt is gone too, and that’s good—so much skin. Kame’s like a furnace, heat radiating off him everywhere they touch, and when his fingers flick open Jin’s fly and find their way inside Jin makes a shuddering sound that goes deep.  
  
Kame’s mouth drags up the side of his neck and then seals over his again, deep and hard, matching the rhythm of his hand, and Jin just hangs onto him, doesn’t even know how long he’ll last, Kame is  _good_  at this. He’s fumbling with Kame’s fly too, because he wants Kame inside him like he hasn’t wanted that in forever, but his fingers won’t work right. Kame finally gets what he’s after though, shuddering when Jin gropes at him again, and he backs off, hovering a few inches above, panting for breath.  
  
There are words in there, thoughts and other stupid things Jin doesn’t  _want_ , and he’s not—why can’t Kame just fucking—  
  
Jin props up on one elbow and latches onto Kame’s neck, sucking hard until Kame groans and sinks heavy on him again. Gropes for him again, and it makes Jin gasp, and then Kame is sliding down his body, swirling his tongue around Jin’s nipple. He’s yanking Jin’s pants down with him as he goes, and Jin thinks  _finally_ , and then Kame’s mouth is around his dick and he’s not actually thinking anything anymore. It’s fast and tight like his hand, but so much hotter. Jin runs his fingers into Kame’s hair and drops his head back, just tries to hang on, feel the up and down, because Kame’s tongue is—and his  _hand_ —oh god…  
  
Jin jerks his leg outward when he feels Kame pressing there, back behind, wet too, he must have done it with his mouth and—then his fingers are sliding in and adding to the rhythm, dragging sounds from Jin’s throat that he’s not even listening to anymore.  _Please_ , and _yes_ , and  _more_ …  
  
He’s right at the edge by the time Kame pulls off, just holding on by his fingertips. He shudders hard when Kame wraps his tongue around the head one last time, hot breath coming in sharp bursts against his sensitized skin. Kame sways and fumbles a bit crawling back over him, and Jin runs his hands up Kame’s sides as Kame fumbles in the drawer for what he needs. When he leans back there’s a dark, hazy stare sweeping over Jin’s face and throat and chest, and Jin can feel the sweat on Kame’s skin, see the way his hair sticks a little to the side of his face. He curls a hand around Kame’s neck and tastes himself on Kame’s tongue, and it pushes back against Jin’s, slow and hard.  
  
Space. Air, while Kame shimmies out of his pants and tears the condom open with his teeth, rolls it onto his cock. Then Kame’s hands again, rough and strong on his thighs, shifting and spreading like he knows just what he’s doing, knows just where he wants Jin, and Jin jerks at the first stretch—such a long time—but then the breath comes out of him on a shudder and even the stretch only feels good.  
  
Kame starts to move, leans in as far as he can, bracing himself with one hand against the mattress over Jin’s shoulder. “Jin,” he whispers, scattering clumsy kisses across Jin’s face until he finds his mouth again. “Jin…”  
  
Jin runs his hands over Kame’s back, feeling the muscles working, sliding one up into Kame’s hair and pulling tight. It makes Kame groan from somewhere deep down, so Jin does it again with a twist, feeling it in his cock every time, and it’s really about time when Kame’s free hand wraps itself around him again.  
  
“Kazuya…”  
  
No—no more, too much, everything. Kame’s hand and Kame’s cock and Kame, the shivers and the breath and the tight pulls, the  _deep_ , and he’s…god, so fucking close. It takes him over, body clenching and arching as he comes, the moans that seem to come from somewhere else, maybe from both of them. It gets faster when he’s done, Kame taking for himself, taking  _Jin_  hard and fast, and Jin tries to hold onto anything he can reach, just hold on and feel it, ride it out until the end. Another groan, this one deeper, rawer somehow as Kame’s body goes tight all at once and unravels.  
  
They’re a tangled mess now, limbs heavy and intertwined. Kame leans down and kisses Jin again—softer, slower, his fingers gentle and a little shaky in Jin’s hair, and Jin just…breathes. He feels fuzzy and exhausted and real, his skin buzzing even when Kame finally lifts off, rolls down beside him. He watches Kame deal with the condom, drop it in the wastebasket and fall back against the mattress again, and Jin doesn’t even have to think about it when he rolls toward him and curls up against his side. It fits, like it always did.  
  
*      *      *  
  
It’s still dark outside when Jin wakes up again, but it’s colder than it was before. There’s a blanket spread over him, tucked up around his shoulders, and he’s still curled up on his side, but Kame is gone.  
  
Jin sits up.  
  
He’s a little bit sore—used more muscles, old muscles, not what he’s used to anymore, and that makes it strange again. Strange and a little cold, and it would be better if he weren’t alone. But then that’s the way it always was when he was with guys, and why would this be any different, really. Maybe it shouldn’t be.  
  
Maybe it won’t be.  
  
The emptiness is starting to creep him out now a little, like he’ll go looking and find out Kame is just  _gone_  even though it’s his own apartment, and Jin knows he won’t be, but…he wants to know that for sure. He finds his jeans on the floor and pulls them on, and then he zips his sweatshirt on and slips back out into the living room, walking quietly just because it feels like that kind of night.  
  
There’s no one out here either, but there is a light on over near the balcony door—and there, through the window, is Kame. He’s wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt—how can he not be fucking freezing out there?—and he’s leaning against the railing facing out across the street, his head lowered, shoulders curved inward. There’s a cigarette between his fingers, Jin can see the little firefly of glowing ash flickering in the breeze—but for the whole minute or so that Jin stands there watching him he doesn’t actually bring it to his mouth.  
  
Jin stuffs his hands into his pockets and leans against the back of the couch. His eyes are stuck on the cigarette, on Kame’s stubby fingers and his bare forearm, and it comes back to him in little pieces. Kame inside him. Kame above him. What he sounds like when he comes, what he tastes like when he’s had Jin in his mouth, and every little piece is like something he imagined a long time ago, except these ones are real. And there’s no giving them back.  
  
He should probably go out there.  
  
It’s not the same kind of terror as before. Not like when he was twenty and cared so much about people thinking he was a fag, or when he was twenty-two and cared so much about actually being one. Not like when he was trying to make shit work the way he thought it was supposed to and it  _didn’t_ , or when he felt alone and lost and far away from everything that had ever really mattered.  
  
But he’s still here on this side of the glass, and Kame is still out there letting ash trickle over his fingers in the dark, and Jin still doesn’t know what he wants. What he really wants.  
  
A cigarette would be good though. Maybe that’s a start.  
  
Kame straightens up and glances back when Jin opens the door. The chill air sneaks under the collar of his sweatshirt immediately, and Jin tugs the zipper up to his neck, hunching down inside it to try to warm himself up. He can feel Kame’s eyes on him all the way as he walks over to stand beside him at the railing, but Jin doesn’t look back at him. He’s not ready for that yet.  
  
“Can I bum one?” Jin asks instead, rubbing his palms over his arms and glancing out over the street.  
  
When Kame just keeps staring at him, Jin nods toward the half-empty cigarette pack sitting on the railing.  
  
“Of course,” Kame mumbles distractedly, nudging the pack toward him. When Jin puts one in his mouth and starts patting down his pockets, Kame reaches into the pocket of his sweatpants and pulls out a lighter. He flicks it on, and Jin lowers his eyes and leans in, taking a few short drags until it catches.  
  
Kame is still watching him as he puts the lighter back in his pocket. Jin just takes the smoke into his lungs and holds it there, letting it out slowly and looking out across the street again.  
  
Kame’s cigarette is so far gone it’s about to burn his fingers by now. Jin doesn’t really watch, but he notices when Kame stubs it out in the ashtray between them. Watches a little bit out of the corner of his eye as Kame pulls out a fresh one and puts the end in his mouth.  
  
It’s silent for a while. Cold too, but the cigarette helps with that.  
  
“Look, Jin—” Kame starts, but Jin doesn’t want to hear it, doesn’t want to let it get the way it always gets, doesn’t want Kame to make his Kamenashi sense of this without knowing.  
  
“I used to sleep with guys,” Jin says. Then he puts the cigarette in his mouth again and takes another drag, because it’s just a fact, and it doesn’t have to be momentous. It was easier to actually say it than he’d thought it would be.  
  
Kame is staring again.  
  
There’s kind of a shuddering breath, and Jin wonders if that’s the cold finally getting to him, or just surprise.  
  
“You what?”  
  
Jin fiddles his cigarette between his fingers. “I slept with guys,” he says again, a little quieter, and maybe it’s even easier the second time.  
  
“When?”  
  
“In California,” Jin says, and takes another drag, filling his lungs with calm. This is easy. This can be easy, just tell the truth.  
  
Kame stares at him for a long time, like he’s trying to wrap his head around that. Jin doesn’t let it rattle him, because of course it would come as a surprise. He can let Kame have his moment.  
  
“When in California?”  
  
“When I was there,” Jin says, and he looks down at the cigarette again. Suddenly wishes he had a drink too, maybe that would help even more with the cold. “That first time.”  
  
“Are you serious?” Kame croaks out.  
  
Jin tries not to bristle at the skepticism, tries not to take it as some kind of comment. It only makes sense Kame would be having a hard time with this, Jin tried like hell not to let anyone know. Especially him.  
  
“I’m not gay,” Jin says, because that seems important all of a sudden, but it’s also just a fact. “I was into it for a while and then I wasn’t anymore. I thought it was a phase or something.”  
  
“You thought?”  
  
There’s the warmth now, crawling up the sides of his neck and into his cheeks. He sneaks a glance over at Kame, but that’s too much, too soon, so he hunches down into his sweatshirt again. “Long story,” he says, because he doesn’t really know what else to say. There’s too much that could get…yeah. “But, whatever, point is I’m not straight either.”  
  
Kame doesn’t say anything to that.  
  
Jin should probably wonder why, probably worry, what is Kame thinking over there, what is he  _doing_ —but he just keeps turning the words over in his own head and…looking at them. Letting them sit there in his brain and be true. It’s strange. He didn’t expect to feel relieved.  
  
“Why didn’t you—”  
  
Jin looks up when Kame cuts himself off. “What?”  
  
Kame gives a tight shake of his head. “Nevermind.”  
  
It’s a weird sort of déjà vu feeling, like that time in the dressing room ages ago. Jin can see that look coming over him like he’s stitching himself together into some pre-determined shape, and Jin doesn’t get…why. Why  _now_.  
  
“What are you doing?” he says, and it comes out a little bit more wobbly than he’d like.  
  
There’s that look again, like  _Jin_  is confused, subtler than before, more practiced, but still…no, no, no, this can’t be where this all ends up. It can’t.  
  
“I’m not doing anything,” Kame says.  
  
“Don’t do that,” Jin says. “I’m serious. Don’t shut down on me like that.”  
  
Kame blinks at him. “I’m not shutting down on you, I didn’t even— What do you want from me?”  
  
“I want you to tell me what you’re thinking,” Jin says.  
  
Kame huffs a skeptical breath and his eyes flick to the side a bit, that irritated twitch Jin would recognize anywhere. His cigarette ash is getting long again, and he takes another short drag before flicking it off over the ashtray.  
  
For a little while, he seems to be chewing on an answer. But then this frown comes over him again, and he looks over at Jin like…god dammit, Jin wishes he could just see into his skull, see whatever Kame is seeing that makes him look like that. Sharp and angry somewhere deep underneath the surface where nobody can reach. Jin hates that look.  
  
Then Kame seems to remember himself. Sort of blinks and shutters again, gives a sharp little sigh and turns back to the railing, scratching at his hairline. “Forget it. Don’t worry about it, it’s not your problem.”  
  
Not his problem.  
  
Fucking—how can he just stare at Jin like that and then say it’s  _not his fucking_ …goddammit. “And you think that’s not shutting down on me?” Jin snaps.  
  
Kame looks surprised. “What?”  
  
“This is exactly what I’m talking about. You’ve obviously got a problem with this—with  _me_ —and I don’t know how to make you— Why can’t you ever just  _say_  shit? You fucking coward.”  
  
Kame looks…really kind of pissed off now.  
  
Okay maybe that was too far.  
  
Jin opens his mouth to take it back.  
  
“ _I’m_  a coward?” Kame says, a little bit dangerously.  
  
Yeah, that was definitely too far.  
  
“Kame—”  
  
“Fuck you.”  
  
“I didn’t mean—”  
  
“I  _kissed_  you, Jin,” Kame hisses. “And you screamed in my face and told me I’d made a stupid drunken mistake and that you obviously didn’t swing that way, and now  _ten years later_  you’re telling me that right after that you went out and fucked a bunch of other guys. What do you expect me to say to that? Congratulations?”  
  
Jin blinks. That…what? That isn’t even… _what?_  
  
“It wasn’t  _right after_ , it was—”  
  
“That is  _not_  the point.”  
  
“Then what is the point?” Jin snaps back. “I should have fucked you instead? You were barely even talking to me!”  
  
“You have  _no idea_  what that was like for me—”  
  
“No, I don’t, because you wouldn’t fucking tell me.” It knocks the wind out of him all over again just remembering, leaves him shaking with…something. Anger maybe, or hurt, or just the cold. “Fuck, Kazuya, you were…you were  _so important_  to me. And I know that the way things happened that night was my fault, I completely fucked that one up and I’m  _sorry_ , but you just…you didn’t even give me a chance.”  
  
Kame gives a twitchy blink. Still frowning, but listening. “A chance to what?”  
  
“To figure it out,” Jin says. His body is still jittering with all of it, everything coming back to him, all these little pieces of things that he’s never told anyone. Not Meisa, not Pi, and certainly not Kame. And he wants to get it right. He needs to make Kame understand. “You were way ahead of me, okay? That night, when you kissed me—and even before that, I didn’t… I had no fucking clue what was going on. I didn’t know about you, and I definitely didn’t know about me, and I just…I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t  _know_  yet. It took me years, and I still… But, you just fucking  _disappeared_.”  
  
Kame stares back at him, and there are thoughts, thoughts, thoughts again. Still the frown, but something older too, smaller and softer on the inside. Something Jin only ever saw across rooms and in mirrors.  
  
“And if I hadn’t disappeared?” It comes out quiet, scratchy. Maybe it’s the years.  
  
“I don’t know,” Jin says. “I really don’t know. If you had been there…maybe I would have.”  
  
God. Fuck.  
  
There’s a little tightening of Kame’s jaw, and he nods. Takes that in. Takes a breath and turns back to the railing, flicking at his cigarette.  
  
He takes another drag. Then he lets it out again on a long breath, and the smoke curls and catches and disappears in the breeze.  
  
The traffic rolls by, far below them. From up here you can barely even hear the car horns, just a rumbling white noise like a river or a rainstorm. Strangely peaceful.  
  
When Jin looks over at Kame again, he sees him staring out at the building across the street with that old, old frown between his brows. His jaw muscle flinches as he swallows, and his fingers are fidgeting with the cigarette. He looks restless, and he looks years away.  
  
“Why did you walk out on me when I did come to you?”  
  
It kind of sneaks out before Jin has thought it all the way through. He’s not even sure it’s a good idea, because there’s all sorts of other complicated stuff in there that he’s not sure he wants to talk about, but—seriously though, where does Kame get off being pissed at Jin for that when the last time…  
  
Kame looks over at him again. “What? When?”  
  
“That other time, in the club,” Jin says. A tiny fleck of ash lands on his wrist, and he brushes it away. “You were all hacked off about that guy who’d just dumped you and you were being a bitch to everybody, so we got drunk. And I made a move on you, and you ditched me.”  
  
Kame is quiet for a moment.  
  
“That was a move?”  
  
Jin is starting to feel a little insulted.  
  
“Of course it was a fucking move. I  _kissed_  you.” So what if it turned out stupid, that was one of the ballsiest things he ever did, and he wants credit for that one, dammit.  
  
“No, I know, I just…” Kame looks confused again. “If that was a move, then why did you turn me down when I offered you sex?”  
  
Jin stares at him.  
  
 _What?_  
  
“You didn’t offer me sex.”  
  
“Yes I did.”  
  
“You did  _not_ ,” Jin insists. “I would definitely remember that.”  
  
“Well obviously not, because I definitely said I was going to the restroom, and you said—”  
  
“That is  _not_  offering sex.”  
  
Kame gapes at him. “Exactly what part of the gay community were you hanging out with when you were gay for six months?”  
  
“What— The part that offers me a  _bed_  when they want to fuck me, asshole,” Jin snaps back.  
  
Kame just stares at him like he’s a little bit crazy, and Jin…that’s when it catches up with him. What Kame is saying right now, what really must have…son of a  _bitch_ …  
  
“Oh my god,” Jin murmurs, turning back to the railing. All of a sudden he feels really, really stupid.  
  
“You really didn’t know what I meant?”  
  
Kame still sounds kind of dumbstruck, and Jin feels even more stupid. “No…”  
  
“Jin, I was  _sitting on top of you_.” Kame’s voice quivers between awkwardness and disbelief. “You’re seriously telling me you couldn’t tell that I wanted you?”  
  
“It’s not that I couldn’t  _tell_ , I just…” Jin rounds on Kame again, floundering for an answer. The memories are a weird mix of blurry and sharp, and the pieces that stand out don’t completely fit together anymore. “I had a lot to drink. I thought you were coming  _back_. I was… I waited for you.”  
  
He can see that as it sinks in, see Kame’s eyes flicker with discomfort. Yeah, join the party, Kamenashi. Maybe Jin’s not the only one here who’s a fucking idiot.  
  
Kame glances away again briefly, sorting through thoughts. “I don’t…”  
  
It gets lost there, somewhere in the smoke. After Jin turns back to his cigarette he thinks he hears Kame breathe a small curse.  
  
“I thought you knew what I meant,” he mutters, talking to the balcony rail.  
  
It sounds almost petulant. Jin should probably be annoyed, but he still feels too stupid for that. “Yeah, well, I didn’t.”  
  
“But, you said—just a minute ago, you said you didn’t want to sleep with men anymore. After California.”  
  
“I didn’t,” Jin says, flicking at his cigarette ash. He could leave it there and it wouldn’t be a lie. But it wouldn’t be the truth either. “Just you.”  
  
Kame doesn’t say anything for a bit. When Jin finally gathers enough courage to look at him again, Kame is pulling thoughtfully on the end of his cigarette, still with a little bit of a frown. Jin’s is pretty much done, and he finishes it off briefly, stubs it out in the ashtray.  
  
“Why wouldn’t you talk to me afterwards?” Kame turns to him again.  
  
“I talked to you,” Jin says, pulling his hands into the sleeves of his sweatshirt, because they’re cold again without the cigarette.  
  
“Not about that,” Kame says. “I thought you were mad at me.”  
  
Jin hunches his shoulders and leans a bit heavier against the railing. “I wasn’t mad at you, I just—I thought you’d rejected me, and I’d thought that whole thing was over anyway, and I just didn’t want to…deal with it.”  
  
Kame is quiet for a moment.  
  
“What ‘whole thing’?”  
  
Jin purses his lips. That…hm. He wasn’t really…going to go there, but maybe…  
  
He looks down at the railing.  
  
“I had a thing for you,” Jin says. Kame doesn’t say anything, but Jin can feel him waiting, feel him listening, and…what the hell. “When I came back from California and we were talking again and stuff I realized…I had a thing for you. But—I don’t know, I was all weirded out by the idea because that seemed like taking the guy thing to a whole other level, and then it turned out you were with somebody else, and I just…yeah.”  
  
He can hear Kame swallow.  
  
“Jin…”  
  
It’s too heavy. Fuck, he shouldn’t have gone there after all these years, this is way too much to dump on anybody, least of all someone who—someone you have this kind of…  
  
“Pretty stupid, huh?” Jin says, trying to laugh it off.  
  
Kame doesn’t take the bait.  
  
“Do you really think that?” Kame asks.  
  
“Don’t you?”  
  
Kame runs his tongue over his lips. “Jin, I was in love with you.”  
  
It’s…that. Just out there, just like that. Jin… He always thought maybe, and he was probably even kind of hoping to hear that when he started this whole thing, he can’t pretend that’s not true, but…now that he’s standing here, now that Kame’s  _saying_  this, all he can hear is the word ‘was.’  
  
It’s not Kame’s fault. Jin is the one who got there ten years too late.  
  
“You were?”  
  
Kame nods.  
  
Jin doesn’t know what to say.  
  
Kame turns back to the railing and Jin is just left there with that, with his own stupid brain and racing thoughts, white noise like the traffic. Funny how it makes his options clearer somehow. Sharper in relief.  
  
Kame glances over when Jin skims his knuckles against Kame’s elbow. Jin doesn’t give either of them too much time to think before he leans in, pressing his lips against Kame’s. They’re warm and soft and tangy with menthol, and Kame kisses back like it’s a reflex, letting Jin show him what he’s after, not backing away. It’s better when Jin slides his hand into Kame’s hair and shows him, and there’s a little sigh he can’t keep in.  
  
Kame’s tongue flicks against his, and Kame tilts his head a little further and leans in a little heavier, and Jin can feel his heart in his throat. He tries not to think about how good this feels, how right. He doesn’t want to get distracted and miss it, the little shifts and sighs and Kame’s warm breath against his lips.  
  
He kisses Kame once, twice more. Runs his thumb over Kame’s cheekbone as he eases back. Kame’s cigarette is still hanging between his fingers, forgotten, and for a moment there’s this fuzzy look in his eyes that makes Jin feel like maybe he’s about to lean in and kiss Jin again.  
  
“Come back to bed with me,” Jin says.  
  
There’s a little blink there, just a little flicker, Kame’s eyes down to his mouth and then up again. He sees Kame swallow, doesn’t hear a no.  
  
“Do you want another drink?” Kame says, sounding a little unsteady on his feet.  
  
Jin doesn’t want another drink. What he wants is to not let Kame out of his sight right now, not let him out of his arms—but that flicker is still there, and he knows he’s not going to score any points by getting all clingy or whatever, and if Kame needs a drink, needs a _minute_ …Jin can wait. Jin can be cool.  
  
“Yeah, sure,” Jin says.  
  
“Cool,” Kame says, and then he reaches for Jin and pulls him in again, stubs his cigarette out in the ashtray and wraps his other arm around Jin’s shoulders, and Jin feels himself go all floaty and light for a while, lost in all the angles of him.  
  
Jin has to resist moving forward again when Kame finally eases back. One of his hands is still lingering in Jin’s hair, and there’s this look in his eyes like he’s still kind of fuzzy, turning things over in his head, catching up—but there’s a smile there too, and that’s…that’s good. Jin is pretty sure that’s good.

His head is still floating a bit when he finds himself back in the bedroom, and his body can’t seem to decide if it’s too cold or too hot. He shivers his way under the covers in a pair of Kame’s sweatpants, fingers and toes prickling with heat. He can hear Kame out there messing with bottles and glasses, thinking all kinds of thoughts that Jin can’t hear.  
  
Whatever, it’s fine, Kame will be back soon, and then…yeah. They’ll talk. And he’ll find out things. He can deal.  
  
The floor creaks over by the doorway, and Kame comes in with two whiskey glasses. Jin brings his arms out from under the covers to take one of them, making sure their fingers touch. Likes the way it makes a smile tug at the corner of Kame’s mouth.  
  
It’s some kind of liqueur Jin doesn’t recognize, sort of fruity and flowery and very Kame—but it tastes nice, and it warms him from the inside better than a vodka and coke. The mattress dips as Kame climbs in from the other side and they both sit there for a bit, slumped against the pillows and drinking.  
  
Or at least Jin is drinking. Kame is just sort of sitting there with the bottom of his glass resting against his stomach and a ponderous frown on his face.  
  
“You okay?” Jin says eventually.  
  
Kame blinks like he’s forgotten Jin is there, notices his tilting glass again just in time to avoid spilling it on himself. He lifts it toward his mouth for a moment as if he’s about to make a show of taking a sip—but he seems to change his mind halfway and sets it over on the nightstand, resigned to the fact that he’s clearly not drinking it. “Yeah,” he says, slumping down into the pillows again, glancing over at Jin. “Sorry, I just…I’m still kind of, you know. Distracted.”  
  
Jin peers at him, trying to read his face. “By what, exactly?”  
  
Kame looks like he’s considering that. Considering Jin. Jin just keeps looking back at him, because maybe if he just looks back at him Kame won’t shrug it off this time.  
  
“How did that even…happen?”  
  
“How did what happen?”  
  
“You,” Kame says. “And the guys. Where did you…you know.”  
  
Jin presses his lips together and glances down at his drink.  
  
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t—this isn’t quid pro quo, or whatever,” Kame says with an awkward half-smile. “You don’t have to tell me stuff. I just…I’m curious.”  
  
“No, it’s okay,” Jin says, taking a little breath. It’s not like he doesn’t want to tell him, but words are… He’s never talked about it. Doing it is a lot different than talking about it. “I met them at bars, mostly. And clubs. I didn’t, like, go looking for it at first, but there was this one time I got really drunk and there was this guy, and I just…tried it. And then I kind of got into it.”  
  
Kame nods. “And by  _it_ , you mean…”  
  
There it is. Jin can feel his ears burning, but hey, that’s what this is. “Yeah,” he says. “I mean, that first time it was just, you know, hands or whatever. But later on I tried other things. I mean, both things—or, really all the things. I think. I don’t really know what else there would be other than maybe…yeah.”  
  
For a moment, he wonders if maybe he should ask—he didn’t know about the secret gay sex in restrooms, maybe there  _are_  other things, maybe Kame is thinking…  
  
“Did you…” Kame starts, and then seems to trip over it a little bit, backing up again. “Were you with somebody?”  
  
Jin blinks at him. His brain is still sort of caught up on things he didn’t try, and he doesn’t really understand what Kame is getting…oh. “Oh. No, I didn’t—I never saw any of them more than once. I don’t even remember most of their names. It was always totally an impulse thing, and I was usually pretty wasted by the time anything…happened.”  
  
Kame nods again, and there’s that little frown again, and Jin isn’t quite sure which part of that answer he didn’t like.  
  
“I’m not…that’s not how it is with you though,” he says, hoping he got it right. Because otherwise this could get embarrassing. “I didn’t just ask you to fuck me just because I was, like, randomly horny and you were  _there_ , or whatever. If that’s what you’re thinking.”  
  
Kame gives him a little smile and slumps down under the covers a bit. “That’s not what I was thinking,” Kame says, in that stubborn tone that makes Jin pretty damn sure that it was.  
  
“Yeah, well,” Jin says. “You know. Just in case.”  
  
Kame nods—but he doesn’t look up again. Just fiddles a stray thread of the comforter between his fingers.  
  
He looks kind of exhausted now that Jin is looking. Somehow older and younger at the same time, rumpled and disheveled, and Jin finds himself wondering what Kame likes. It’s weird when he thinks about it, because for all his torrid fantasies about him over the years, he’s not sure he’s ever really wondered that before. What Kame wants, for himself.  
  
Kame looks over at him with a question, but he doesn’t stop Jin from looking.  
  
It’s different this time when Jin sets his glass aside and shrugs down under the covers and gets up close, gets into Kame’s space. He’s somehow suddenly more aware than ever that they’re actually in bed together, half dressed and generally sober with pizza boxes on the floor. Kame lets him get up close, turns toward him a little and lets him slide a hand over his ribcage. Jin can feel the warmth of Kame’s skin through the threadbare cotton t-shirt and the way his side moves a little with his breath, and the way his lips open when Jin presses in close.  
  
It’s lazy, the way Kame kisses back. He lets Jin tip him back a little for an easier angle, runs fingertips lightly into Jin’s hair to steady them, keep it slow and soft. Jin’s knee falls between Kame’s knees, and Jin slides his hand around and up between Kame’s shoulder blades, and Kame just breathes and keeps kissing back. He feels so warm and solid, so safe, Jin doesn’t even know why his heart is beating like crazy.  
  
It goes deep then, deep and long, and Kame’s fingers curl a little tighter in Jin’s hair, his other hand resting at the back of Jin’s neck, and Jin is starting to feel giddy. High on cigarettes and Kame.  
  
“Just for the record,” Jin murmurs brushing his lips against Kame’s again and trying to get his dick to calm down a little bit, cause it’s way ahead of the game. Kame can probably tell. “This is a move. Right now. Me, making a move on you.”  
  
Kame breathes a laugh and shifts against him, drawing his knee up a little to press his thigh against Jin’s hip. “Yeah, I think I got that.”  
  
“Okay,” Jin swallows. God, Kame is so hot. He doesn’t even look like he’s trying, and Jin already feels like… “Just checking. I want points for this one.”  
  
“I’ll put it on the scoreboard,” Kame murmurs back, low like that, just right.  
  
“You better,” Jin says, and then he kisses Kame again, deeply, and he can feel Kame smiling and kissing him back, feel where he’s turned on too, and…god, it’s been such a long time since he’s felt so awake with someone, so alive.  
  
He wonders what Kame will do if he kisses down the side of his neck, softly just below the ear. He can wonder that—he can  _do_  that, make Kame shiver and tilt his chin up for more. There’s a little sigh, fingers tighter in Jin’s hair, and Jin loves that.  
  
He wonders how Kame likes it best, how he likes to be touched. If he likes to take it fast and rough—Kame could like that, Jin could definitely see him liking that. He seemed to like it a lot a couple hours ago, though that wasn’t even really all that… Well. But. Maybe.  
  
He wonders if Kame likes to fuck or be fucked. Maybe soft and deep, intense like that, giving over like that, and Jin gets this image in his head of what he would look like—what he would be like…  
  
It wigs him out a little when he realizes it’s Hiroshi or the guitar player or that orange shoe guy or just some nameless faceless other _somebody_  who would have seen him like that. Sends a little chill skittering down his spine and makes him hold on a little tighter, because that’s not… He really doesn’t want to think about that.  
  
It doesn’t matter. Jin fucked other guys, Kame fucked other guys. Those guys aren’t here right now—Jin is.  
  
He runs his hands slowly down Kame’s sides, feeling the ticklish little twitches between a few of the ribs, and then he slides a hand down inside Kame’s sweatpants and grabs at his hip, holding him close.  
  
“What do you want?” Jin murmurs, keeping his eyes low.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“I mean…what do you like. Like, what do you want me to do. Do you want me to fuck you?”  
  
Kame shudders a little in his arms. “You can fuck me if you want.”  
  
“I’m not asking if I can,” Jin says, kissing his neck again. “I’m asking you if you want me to. You did what I want—I want to do what you want.”  
  
When Kame doesn’t answer, Jin pulls back a little. He scatters kisses across Kame’s chin, because Kame’s eyes are all dark and  _Kame_ right now, and he still needs to work up to that a little. But then he looks up, and he finds Kame looking back at him uncertainly. Jin doesn’t really get why, until he notices the way Kame’s eyes flick down to Jin’s mouth and the way his fingers are a bit distracted in Jin’s hair, and realizes he’s fighting with himself again.  
  
“You want me to suck you?” Jin says.  
  
Kame looks caught. Fixes his eyes on Jin’s. “I didn’t—”  
  
“You do though,” Jin says, narrowing eyes at Kame’s face. “Don’t you.”  
  
Kame swallows.  
  
His hand is still fidgeting in Jin’s hair, fingernails sometimes scratching lightly. His eyes are still studying Jin’s face, and it’s weird how it’s nervous and warm and somehow dark at the same time. Jin thinks of hotel rooms full of smoke and empty bottles and guys in his mouth and Kame’s hand drags down along his jawline and swipes a thumb across Jin’s lip, just there. There’s smoke in Kame’s eyes too.  
  
Jin lets out a shaky breath, and it seems to wake Kame up. His eyes flick back up to Jin’s, and he pulls his hand back a bit. “Sorry, I don’t mean to—”  
  
“It’s okay,” Jin says, before he can pull back too far again, because it’s cold where Kame’s hand isn’t. “I like it.” It’s an unexpected shiver, saying that out loud. Guys in his mouth and smoke in Kame’s eyes. He didn’t really think about it, and now it feels raw and sort of vulnerable, maybe like he shouldn’t have admitted it—but he doesn’t take it back. Just kisses Kame to remind them where they were, gives himself a moment and breathes it out. The truth. “I really like it.”  
  
It’s right. The way Kame looks at him when he says it…it’s right.  
  
Jin pushes Kame’s t-shirt up out of the way, bends his head down and flicks his tongue over one of his nipples, and Kame closes his eyes and gives a little breathless sigh. There’s a sharp tremor when he does it again, and Jin tries to hold him still, because it gets Jin a little harder every time he does that and it’s making it really hard to concentrate. He blows on the damp nipple so it perks up and then he flicks his thumb over it again, and Kame sort of shudders and twitches and laughs at the same time.  
  
“God, Jin…”  
  
It’s deep and sort of scratchy, really hot, and Jin just shifts over to try the other nipple, see what it does. “Good?” he murmurs against Kame’s skin, and it earns him another little shiver.  
  
Jin reaches down and feels out the shape of him through the sweatpants, thick and hard, and a little bit damp near the tip. It gives Jin another little prickle along his spine to remember earlier, and there’s this flash of images through his mind, old fantasies of crawling under tables or Kame in Jin’s darkened bedroom or random storage closets where the world is shut out and they’re shut in and this is so much realer and so much fumblier and so much hotter than any of that.  
  
He tugs on the waist of Kame’s sweatpants, just far enough down his hips to get his dick out, see it curve against Kame’s stomach. He glances up, and Kame is watching propped up on his elbows with his shirt slipping down a little and his stomach dipping sharply, and Jin just thinks how awesome he looks and tries to remember how to do that thing with his tongue.  
  
He runs his hand over it bare, bends down and licks it from base to tip, and Kame jerks and makes a sharp noise, hips bucking upward. Jin’s watching, watching every little movement, listening for every little gasp and curse as he licks him again and then gets down to it, takes Kame into his mouth and starts sucking, moving, making it wet and tight and just like he used to with the others. Half-lit hotel rooms and the buzz, the way they smelled, the way they got harder when Jin sucked more and it made his arms go weak, and Kame…he looks up and it’s  _Kame_ …  
  
Kame’s fingers are gentle and needy in his hair, on his shoulders, and his eyes are so dark he looks like he’s trying not to close them, not to just grab on and take what he needs—but Jin keeps it steady, takes it slow, because that’s the way he wants it this time. He wants to know everything, feel everything. Every little quiver in his thighs under Jin’s fingertips, every cutoff thrust when Jin gets it just right.  
  
“Jin,” Kame breathes, and Jin can feel what it does to him down below, and he knows—he  _knows_ —he was right. Kame doesn’t sound like that for all the other guys. Kame doesn’t sound like that for just anyone.  
  
There’s another hitch, and soon Kame is scrabbling at Jin’s hair, not managing to hold back so much anymore—but Jin doesn’t even mind, he  _likes_  it. Likes the hard, likes the almost-too-deep, once or twice. Likes the tug at his hair and the way Kame sounds, the way he can feel it coming, hear it coming, and then—  
  
Hot and thick, and Kame’s voice in his ears, Jin’s name again. And again. It’s an old familiar reflex as he swallows it away. Kame is shivering all over, spent and flung out, still half-dressed and now covered in sweat, and Jin doesn’t think he’s ever seen him look such a perfect mess.  
  
Kame gropes for Jin’s hair, his t-shirt, pulls him up again, rakes eyes over Jin’s face. For a moment Jin wishes he’d wiped his mouth on the way up, but then Kame kisses him deeply, breathlessly, one leg curling around Jin’s thigh. It presses Jin’s dick against Kame’s hip, and Jin has to draw in a sharp breath that leaves him kind of dizzy. Yeah…he definitely liked that. It’s way better with Kame.  
  
“Fuck me,” Kame breathes, moving against him again. It’s not even smooth, sort of jerky and clumsy, but god, it works.  
  
“What?” Jin blinks at him, trying to focus past his dick, which is really not interested in conversation right now and would probably just keep humping itself against Kame’s hip like this if Jin left it in charge. “But you just—”  
  
“Yeah, I know,” Kame mumbles, still kissing his way along Jin’s cheek. “Fuck me anyway. I won’t come, I just want…”                            
  
Jin swallows. It’s not that he—the idea sounds good, and one part of him thinks it sounds great, and he knows he even  _offered_  before, but he just…it’s been a really long time, and this part gets…it’s more complicated. And with Kame all, like…post-orgasmic, and stuff…  
  
“Please,” Kame says, mouth dragging over Jin’s jaw toward his ear, and Jin is pretty sure he can hear the smirk.  
  
That…okay, he deserved that one.  
  
“Where are the condoms?”  
  
“Top left,” Kame says, gesturing toward the nightstand, and right, that was…yeah.  
  
Jin kisses Kame once more and then pushes up to his knees. The mattress feels a lot wobblier than it did when he lay down, and he kind of has to army-crawl his way over there just to keep his balance, keep his focus. He sits up then, pulls his t-shirt off over his head because…anyway it seems right, and his pants too, he needs to…  
  
Oh god, his fingers are shaking trying to get the packet open and—for fuck’s sake, this isn’t his first  _time_ , not even with a guy. Why is he so fucking nervous?  
  
He needs to calm the fuck down. Just breathe. One thing at a time.  
  
Packet. Condom. Lube.  
  
He rolls the condom on—that part he knows, that part is easy. Then he gets rid of the empty packet and takes the lube with him as he crawls back across the bed. Kame is kicking his sweatpants off, knees falling open and his dick soft against his stomach, and that…he doesn’t know why that freaks him out more, he knows Kame won’t be…and he asked for this anyway, so. It’s what he wants. But, god.  
  
Jin’s fingers fumble a little as he tries to get the cap off the lube bottle, scoots up between Kame’s knees. Kame just waits there, spreads a little more to make room. The lube is slick, drippy between Jin’s fingers, and he thinks he maybe got a bit on the sheets, but…shit, he didn’t even ask, did he. Doesn’t know what Kame needs, maybe he’s just expecting Jin to slick himself and slide right in. How often does he do this?  
  
Fuck, that leads him back to Hiroshi… _fuck_ …  
  
Kame is watching him. Kame doesn’t seem weirded out by the lube on the fingers, and he’s definitely…okay that seems like approval, the way he tilts his hips up when Jin moves his hand down between them, and when Jin steadies Kame’s leg against his shoulder and opens him up gently, that…that seems like it’s okay. Kame grabs onto him when he gets past the second knuckle, and for a moment Jin worries, but Kame doesn’t seem like he’s trying to stop him. He closes his eyes and breathes a little funny, but there’s no pushing away.  
  
It’s slick and tight, and Jin can’t even—he doesn’t remember any tricks or techniques, just has to pay attention and try to think what he would want. Kame makes a soft grunting sound when Jin gets the second finger in, shifting a little underneath Jin’s hands, his palms sweaty where he’s gripping Jin’s arms.  
  
“You okay?” Jin asks. He’s a little out of breath already and he’s not even inside yet.  
  
Kame nods, runs his tongue over his lips. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. Go for it.”  
  
Jin watches him, keeps his fingers shifting and stretching just a little bit longer, just a little bit more. Just to be sure. Kame’s eyes stay closed, but he doesn’t show any signs of distress. So.  
  
Finally Jin slips his fingers out. He digs the lube bottle out of the comforter again and slicks himself, tries not to drop Kame’s leg, or drop the bottle, or lose his balance on his knees. He has to shift them around a bit to get Kame up high enough, get his hips situated at the right angle, and it’s—it should be second nature, it’s not even that different from being with a woman, but he just…what do you do with all the limbs?  
  
“You okay?” Kame asks back, and Jin looks up. Kame is looking slightly concerned.  
  
 _Yeah. Don’t worry babe, I got this_ , Jin thinks. He starts to say it too, but it sticks in his throat.  
  
Truth.  
  
“I’m super nervous,” he says. “I don’t…I’ve only done it like this like twice.”  
  
Kame lets out a heavy breath, smiles a little. “It’s okay,” he says. Then with a bit of a flush crawling up his neck, “Me too.”  
  
“That’s not helping,” Jin complains, though it does make something come a little looser in his chest.  
  
“Sorry,” Kame says, smiling wider and shifting his hips upwards invitingly. Jin reaches down between them and lines himself up.  
  
God, it’s  _tight_ —he has to bite his lip after the first slide to stop himself making an embarrassing noise, and there are sparks at the back of his eyes as he squeezes them shut. Tries to breathe and not come, not yet. He’s pretty sure that’s not how this is supposed to work.  
  
When he opens them again he finds Kame with his eyes still closed, head thrown back and lips bitten shut, breathing fast.  
  
“Shit, are you okay?”  
  
Kame nods quickly. “I’m fine,” he gasps. “I’m totally fine, I’m just—just give me a second…”  
  
Jin waits. He tries to hold as still as possible while Kame adjusts. He can feel his hands getting sweaty on Kame’s thighs, and god it’s tight. Kame’s skin is all flushed and warm, and his grip on Jin’s arms doesn’t ease up, doesn’t give him room to settle—Jin can feel the strain in his thighs trying to keep still, just let Kame adjust. He has to remind himself to keep breathing.  
  
“Okay,” Kame breathes, shifting a little in a way that makes Jin want to hold his breath again. “I’m okay…”  
  
It gets easier from there, more familiar as Jin pushes in the rest of the way, as they find a rhythm. Soon it’s definitely working, their bodies moving together like it’s old choreography they don’t even have to think about anymore, and Kame is looking up at him all dark-eyed and contented. His eyes sweep down over Jin’s face and his chest, where they’re joined together. He curls his hands over Jin’s fingers where they’re sweaty and probably squeezing too hard on Kame’s thighs, runs them up over his arms and shoulders, into his hair. He’s even almost half-hard again, though he doesn’t seem interested in doing anything about it, and Jin just wants to feel closer, get closer. He wants…  
  
On an impulse, he unwinds one of his arms from Kame’s leg and wraps it around Kame’s waist instead. Kame breathes a laugh and grabs onto Jin’s shoulders again for support as Jin sort of rolls them sideways, trying not to crush Kame’s leg or slip out, and it’s sort of…not totally successful, but Kame seems to get what he’s after. Goes with the flow until he’s on top, trying to re-seat himself. There’s a little bit of fumbling where the condom has slipped, and Jin has to straighten it out—but then Kame gets him lined up and settles back down again, heavy on his hips. It’s even deeper like this.  
  
“Smooth,” Kame remarks, stroking fingertips down the side of Jin’s neck, one palm flat against his chest. His hair sticks up in all sorts of odd directions, and the smile makes him look even more beautiful.  
  
Jin lets his hands settle on Kame’s hips, still trying to catch his breath. “I thought so,” he says. And then Kame shifts again, up and back down a little, and the way he’s using his muscles to support himself… “Oh god,” Jin gasps, and rocks up against him.  
  
His eyes are all dark again, watching Jin, probably seeing everything that his body is doing to Jin’s and it’s just…Jin doesn’t even know why he doesn’t mind that, why he  _likes_  it. Kame runs his hands over Jin’s chest and down his sides, thumbs flicking over his nipples, and the way he moves… There’s that roll in his body, something he does for the music, and Jin never imagined him doing it like this, but he probably should have. One of Kame’s hands brushes low on Jin’s stomach and wraps around his own cock, stroking just a couple of times, his eyes still all over Jin, and that’s—oh  _god_.  
  
“Kame,” Jin mumbles, fingers groping at Kame’s waist, Kame’s elbow, higher up. He wants closer, he wants  _closer_ …  
  
Kame gives in to the tugging, leans down and kisses Jin. His hand stays between them, still stroking lazily as he slips his tongue into Jin’s mouth and keeps pushing his hips down against Jin’s, and Jin wraps his arms around Kame and keeps pushing back. So hot. He’s so…fucking…  
  
“Kazuya,” Jin breathes into his mouth. It’s getting faster, he’s getting close, and he doesn’t want to finish because he doesn’t want it to stop. “Oh god, Kazu…”  
  
There’s a small, desperate sound in the back of Kame’s throat, and Kame lets go of himself and kisses Jin harder. Fists his free hand in sheets at Jin’s shoulder and kisses him harder, doesn’t stop moving. There are teeth, and Kame is so fucking  _strong_ , and Jin can’t…there’s no way…  
  
Kame swallows the moan too when Jin comes. It spreads all the way out to his fingers and toes, the warmth and the good, Kame’s slowing weight on top of him, hands stroking shivers from his skin. There’s hot breath and another kiss, Kame’s tongue in his mouth again, and Jin reaches up to steady him and make it slow, make it last longer, make it last.  
  
Eventually it slows to a stop, and Kame rests his forehead against Jin’s. Both of them are breathing hard, sweaty and exhausted, and Jin can’t stop running his hands over Kame’s back. He doesn’t want to move. He really doesn’t ever want to move from right here.  
  
“I love you,” Jin breathes.  
  
He can feel the hitch in Kame’s body, but he doesn’t open his eyes. Just keeps running his hands over Kame’s naked back and breathes it out. The truth.  
  
“I think I was always in love with you.”  
  
Kame’s hand touches his face, and Jin opens his eyes. Kame is staring back at him with something fierce and bright in his eyes, and Jin tries not to lose his nerve.  
  
Then he blinks, glances away. Shifts a bit. Jin feels the tug on the condom, reaches down to hold it in place while Kame lifts himself off carefully. There’s a bit more shifting as Kame unwinds his legs from around Jin’s hips and rolls to the side. Jin sits up just far enough to slip off the condom, toss it in the wastebasket. When he settles back again and turns toward him, Kame is lying there staring up at the ceiling, one hand in his hair. He looks…something. Confused, maybe. Troubled.  
  
It’s not…god, this is…  
  
“I’m not saying I expect you to…still…” Jin says, swallowing past the sticky part. “I know you didn’t want to do that anymore, and I get it—I get why that’s complicated for you. And I can be fine with it if you just want to be friends. Like this. I’d rather have you in my life like this than not at all.”  
  
He hopes it sounds true.  
  
“Jin…” Kame’s voice comes out rough.  
  
Maybe he didn’t say it right. Maybe his face gave him away, Kame could always see through him. He reaches over and strokes Kame’s arm a little, just to tell him it’s really okay. It really is okay.  
  
“It’s not that I don’t…” Kame starts. But it trails off, and he flounders there for a bit, doesn’t seem to know where to go.  
  
Jin strokes his arm again, just a little, tries to keep steady and not hold on too tight. He won’t beg. He won’t push, if Kame really doesn’t…  
  
“I just,” Kame flicks his tongue over his lips. Then he lets out a breath, “God, Jin, do you have any idea how long it took me to get over you?”  
  
It thumps in his chest, heavy and hollow, raw like Kame’s face. All the broken pieces and jagged edges, all the things Kame felt he had to hide. Jin can see them now.  
  
“Yeah,” Jin says, looking back at him. “I think I do.”  
  
And that, there—Kame sees it. Kame sees Jin too.  
  
He rolls closer and kisses Jin again, not strong or hard, not even  _yes_ , but just…the two of them here, now. Looking back at all the thens.  
  
Jin leans into the kiss a little bit, fingertips brushing Kame’s elbow, leaving him room to curl closer. Leaving him room to stay.  
  
But Kame settles back again, one hand resting on Jin’s chest, just below his collarbone. His eyes still troubled.  
  
“I just…” Kame says, pushing himself up to sit and gesturing toward the bathroom. “I’ll just be a minute.”  
  
Jin props up and watches him cross the bedroom, watches the door close behind him. When he hears the water running in the sink, Jin flops back onto the mattress and stares up at the ceiling trying to get his head together, wondering what’s next. If this is all.  
  
There are more sounds from the sink, rinsing and splashing—and then everything goes quiet. After a few moments, the bathroom door opens again, and Kame comes out. His hair is a little damp and spikey at the edges, like he splashed some water on his face.  
  
He sits down on his side of the bed again, pulls the sheet up over his lap. Jin’s hand is lying near his thigh on the mattress, but Jin doesn’t reach over and touch him or anything. Kame seems to be thinking. Distracted, anyway.  
  
“You love me,” Kame repeats, quietly, like he's reading back the record. His eyes flick over to Jin for confirmation, and Jin nods.  
  
“Jin, I don’t…I don’t know what to do with that,” Kame admits. “I mean, a few hours ago I thought we were just finally… But. This. And now you’re telling me you  _love_  me, and I just—I don’t know what you want me to…”  
  
It’s fraying. Jin can see it, knows Kame hates it when he doesn’t have a handle on himself, can’t put it all in order, make a plan.  
  
But maybe that’s a good thing. Kame’s plans involve cutting off ties with people who care about him because he’s afraid they might see through him, and never ever letting himself fall in love with somebody again because the fucking paparazzi might not like it. Kame’s plans suck.  
  
“Love me back,” Jin murmurs.  
  
Kame frowns at him, like he thinks Jin is being flippant.  
  
“I’m serious,” Jin says. “I know I took way too long to get here, and…I get it if the answer is no.” It will suck balls, and Jin doesn’t really want to think about what he’ll do if it comes to that, but…yeah. He gets it. “But you asked me what I want, and that’s it. I want to give this a chance. I want to be with you.”  
  
Kame considers this for a long moment. He looks sort of stuck, eyes full of what-ifs. “You don’t know if this will work,” he points out. “This could fuck everything up again.”  
  
There’s a little swoop in Jin’s chest at that, and he tries not to hope too hard. Not yet. “No,” he concedes. “I don’t. And it might.”  
  
“That’s…I don’t know if I can…”  
  
Kame always was the type to think too much.  
  
“No,” Jin agrees. “But you can try.”  
  
When Kame still seems stuck, Jin reaches over and curls his fingers around Kame’s wrist. Gives it a little tug.  
  
“Kaaazu,” he murmurs, trying a little smile. “It’s late. Come to bed with me.”  
  
Kame looks down at Jin’s hand on his arm, lips twitching a bit. Then he looks up at Jin again, and there’s so much of him there in his eyes, so much of everything he’s afraid of. Everything he wants.  
  
Jin gets that. He’s been there.  
  
“You’re so needy,” Kame says, turning his hand in Jin’s so he can stroke fingertips along Jin’s wrist.  
  
Jin smiles and curls closer, pressing his lips against the back of Kame’s hand. “Yep,” he says. He squeezes Kame’s hand, and there’s a little thrill when he feels it squeeze back.  
  
Kame shifts and sinks down next to Jin. Jin releases his arm in favor of squirming closer, finding places for all their limbs and resting his head on Kame’s shoulder. He smiles when Kame’s fingers start playing with his hair.  
  
It’s quiet for a while, the two of them drifting in the silence and closeness. Jin starts to feel like he might actually fall asleep soon, and he’s pretty okay with that, even if it means they’ll wake up with all the sheets tangled and all the lights on. Kame seems pretty okay where he is too, and Jin hopes it will stay that way.  
  
“What are you doing tomorrow?” Kame murmurs after a while. His fingers are still playing with the little strands of hair that curl around Jin’s ear.  
  
Jin hums against his chest, doesn’t open his eyes. “Not much. Theia has playgroup in the afternoon, but Meisa is taking her. I’m supposed to work on some stuff for the business manager.”  
  
“What about in the evening?”  
  
Jin thinks. Tries to, anyway. “Nothing that I know of.”  
  
“Do you want to have dinner then?”  
  
Jin opens his eyes. Glances up at Kame’s chin. Kame is still looking up at the ceiling, but Jin can see his tongue dart out over his lips. “You mean, like…all of us, or just me?”  
  
Kame looks down at him. “Just you. I… You could come over here again, if you want. I could cook for us.”  
  
“Are you asking me out on a date?”  
  
Kame presses his lips together for a moment. “Sort of.”  
  
Jin gives him a flat look. “That’s not an answer, Kame.”  
  
Kame breathes a laugh, and Jin can feel it move in Kame’s chest. A soft smile tugs at Kame’s lips. “It’s a start,” he says. And then he leans down and kisses Jin, sweet and slow.  
  
Jin curls his arms around Kame and kisses him back.  
  
*      *      *


	10. Epilogue: 2018

_Spring_  
  
Kame’s place always smells like the outdoors somehow—like a deep forest or a mountain stream, or one of those caves you have to, like, crawl and squirm your way through for an hour just to find the magic whatever-thingy at the heart of it. In the winter it often smells like the beach—when Jin starts catching himself dreaming of goya juice, he knows Kame’s idle musings about wanting to go somewhere sunny and tropical for a while won’t be far behind.  
  
Today, it smells like cookies.  
  
“You didn’t buy nuts.”  
  
Jin glances up from the mixing bowl. Kame is sitting over at the breakfast bar with his glasses perched on his head, a couple of scripts and a bunch of papers spread out in front of him. Jin tried to get him to move over to the dining table after he dropped some of the papers in the sink, but Kame said he was fine at the counter and spread the wet papers out over the towel rack to dry. Jin is pretty sure he just wants to be close enough to keep backseat driving.  
  
“I’m leaving out the nuts this time,” Jin says, rubbing his shoulder against his cheek where the flour is tickling his skin. His hands are covered in sticky. He started with a spoon, but that doesn’t work anymore once the dough gets this thick.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because they said not to send anything with nuts in them—it’s on the sheet.” He nods toward the butter-stained paper hanging off the corner of the kitchen table.  
  
Kame scratches at his hairline with the end of his pencil. “What do they have against nuts? I thought kids usually got over that stuff by the time they were her age.”  
  
“I think it’s an allergy thing,” Jin says. He can feel the sweat beading on the back of his neck as he kneads the dough—this is harder with a double-batch. Maybe he should have tried the electric mixer this time. He keeps forgetting Kame has one.  
  
“Ah,” Kame nods. He looks like he wants to question the choice of chocolate walnut cookies when the walnuts aren’t allowed, but he seems to decide against it. It’s a silly question anyway—Kame was the one who hooked her on the damn things in the first place.  
  
When it finally seems like everything is all mushed together and he’s stopped coming across little pockets of unmixed flour, Jin scrapes as much of the dough off his fingers as he can and sets aside the bowl full of sticky. He tries not to touch anything as he crosses over to the sink and taps the faucet with the heel of his hand. The water comes out too hot at first, because Kame was the last one doing dishes in here, but Jin is used to the sting. Nudges the handle a bit to the right to cool it down.  
  
Kame has turned back to his script again. He’s frowning at a paragraph of stage direction and chewing on his bottom lip, pencil hovering near the margin. Jin cranes his neck a bit to try to read what he’s mulling over, but it’s too far away—all he can make out is something about a lonely park bench in a rainstorm.  
  
That doesn’t sound like the shop-clerk guy.  
  
“You still have both of them?” Jin asks, frowning at him. The shop-clerk guy is the one underneath, he can see a bit of the title peeking out around a stack of mail. “I thought you were going to send that one back.”  
  
“I was,” Kame murmurs as he flips back a page or two and adds something to his last note. “But Watsuki-san wanted me to finish reading it first.”  
  
“But you said it was crap.”  
  
Kame shrugs. “I thought maybe it would get better.”  
  
“But what about the shop-clerk guy? You’re turning it down?”  
  
Kame looks up at him. He’s giving him that mild, eyebrowy look, like he never realized Jin had such a fetish for dudes in pocket-protectors. “I haven’t turned anything down, I’m just—there are things that still need to be worked out with that. We might have to move the tour, and the overseas thing is complicated, and Watsuki-san asked me to read this other script again, so I’m reading it. That’s all.”  
  
Jin flicks the sink off again, rests a hip against the counter as he dries his hands. “You  _really_  liked the shop-clerk script,” he reminds him.  
  
Kame concedes that with a nod, turning back to the script. “Yeah, well, my last three projects were ones I really liked. Sometimes I have to suck it up and do what they like.”  
  
This is…not totally untrue. Jin knows that. But this one is different—he hasn’t seen Kame that excited by a first-read in a long time. And the tour…that. Yeah. But, that’s not a reason not to do it, and he doesn’t think Kame would really think so either.  
  
“Is it the California thing?” Jin asks.  
  
“No,” Kame says, not taking his eyes off the page. Not even when he gets to the end of the line, and Jin knows he isn’t reading anymore.  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
Kame sighs, finally looks up. “Look, don’t worry about it, alright? I’m not— I’ll probably do it, or whatever, but I don’t want to… I just want to finish reading this first. Okay?”  
  
Jin watches him carefully. He still wants to poke at that—he really,  _really_  wants to poke—but Kame looks sort of tired, and Jin knows he’s been under a lot of stress with all the return-of-the-conquering-heroes shit the agency has been putting them through since March. He does want to poke, but he doesn’t want to  _push_.  
  
Maybe later. After dinner. And after cookies.  
  
*      *      *  
  
“Ooh, can I steal one?” Meisa glances back at him over her shoulder with hopeful eyes, indicating the tupperware he dropped in her hands at the doorway.  
  
“One,” Jin says, following her into the kitchen. She sets the cookies down on the counter between them and turns to grab a couple of glasses off the shelf. “I made a double batch, but there are like fifty kids in her class.”  
  
“There are thirty-five,” she says. She gets the milk from the fridge and fills his glass to the brim, but only pours half a glass for herself before setting the carton aside.  
  
Jin had four at home. But three of those were this afternoon, and they were out of milk, so that hardly counts.  
  
He picks a small one though. Well. Small-ish.  
  
“She asleep?” he asks.  
  
“Yeah,” Meisa says, a little bit apologetically. “Sorry. She was totally zonked after the swim class. I don’t know if it just wears her out, or if there’s something in the chlorine. Hey.” She frowns at her cookie. “There aren’t any walnuts.”  
  
Jin shakes his head and takes another bite. “It was on the sheet. No nuts.”  
  
“Kame let you make them without the nuts?”  
  
Jin gives her a look. She just smiles back.  
  
“ _Kame_  had somebody baking him cookies and making him dinner all afternoon while he was sitting around reading bad screenplays. Kame doesn’t get to complain. Also, they taste great without the walnuts.”  
  
Meisa shrugs and tilts her head halfheartedly. Jin steals a chunk of her cookie in protest.  
  
“I found your other guitar, by the way,” she says, polishing off the last of her cookie and reaching for another. He did say only one, but now that he’s looking he sees that there are a ton of them in there, and he supposes he can let one more slide. How many cookies can these kids eat anyway?  
  
“Where was it?”  
  
“In the storage space. Stuck behind a box of girlie posters—must have been in there since we moved here.”  
  
“Seriously?”  
  
She nods.  
  
“Shit.” Jin breaks off another half a cookie for himself. “I would’ve sworn I’d seen it around somewhere since then. Did you bring it up?”  
  
She nods again. “Brought up the girlie posters too, and a couple of boxes of kitchen stuff from your old place. You want them, or should I throw them out?”  
  
Jin mulls over a bite of cookie. Tries to think where he would put his old mismatched aluminum frying pans in Kame’s gleaming cabinets full of Williams-Sonoma.  
  
He really needs to stop thinking of it as Kame’s kitchen.  
  
“I’ll take the dishes,” he says, because he does sort of miss his bowls now that he thinks of it—they were a little bigger than Kame’s, perfect size for a lot of stuff. Like chili. And ice cream. “We can get rid of the pots and pans though. You want me to do something with them?”  
  
Meisa shakes her head. “I’m dropping a bunch of stuff off at the donation center next week anyway, I can take them. What about the posters?”  
  
“Mine,” Jin says, and pops the last bite of cookie into his mouth.  
  
*      *      *  
  
When Jin gets back to the apartment, laden with a guitar, a box of old dishes, a duffel bag full of spare linens, and a roll of naked lady posters, everything is dark and quiet.  
  
He sets the dishes down over by the couch, and the posters and linens beside them. He’ll have to sort through them all to figure out which ones he actually wants to keep up here and which ones are going right back down to Kame’s storage space— _their_  storage space—but he’ll leave that for the morning. He’s sort of toying with the idea of talking Kame into putting the illustrated one of the crouching woman in tiger stripes over the desk in the study—it’s  _art_ , totally legit—but that too can wait until morning. Or afternoon.  
  
Kame must have cleaned up the kitchen after he left. There are only a couple of pans still in the drainer, everything else has been neatly put away and the table wiped down and ready for the morning. Jin really likes mornings with Kame. Not that they spend that much of the time together, Kame is usually up and showered at least an hour before Jin becomes conscious, and he has his granola and cantaloupe or whatever his latest diet says—but he brings Jin coffee some days, when there’s time, and crawls back into bed with him and wraps himself around Jin fully dressed. Listens to Jin mumble nonsense at him and mumbles nice things back until Jin’s brain gets up to speed. It’s Jin’s favorite way of waking up.  
  
The light is on in the bedroom. Kame is sitting up with one of the scripts—still the bad one, Jin sees from the frown between his brows, but…whatever. Kame wants to stick it out, that’s up to Kame.  
  
“How was Theia?” Kame asks while Jin is in the closet finding a spot for the guitar. There isn’t much space left in his half, but he manages to wedge it in between the shoe rack and one of the dividers. They should really probably talk again about looking for a new place, maybe sooner rather than later. He can get by using the study as a studio for now, but—actually, maybe that’s where the guitar should go…  
  
“Jin?”  
  
“What?” Jin pokes his head out again and finds Kame looking at him like he wonders if Jin got crushed by one of the piles of stuff they don’t have space for anymore. “Oh. Sorry—she was asleep, I didn’t get to talk to her.”  
  
“That’s too bad.”  
  
Jin shrugs. “It was late, I figured she might be. I’ll see her tomorrow afternoon.” He pulls off his t-shirt and tosses it into the hamper, scratching fingers through his hair. When he goes for the buckle on his pants, he catches Kame looking just a little bit and tries to hide the smile. Hey, he’s happy to get Kame’s mind off that stupid script. Anyway he likes that cozy little rush, the one that doesn’t burn so much as simmer. Makes him sort of want to crawl into bed and jump Kame’s bones. Find that hum and shiver, the way he knows Kame likes it. The way they both like it.  
  
But he’s also kind of tired from all the baking and hauling, and…it’s late. So.  
  
He does crawl into bed though, after he’s traded the jeans for sleep pants and a t-shirt—and when he does, Kame puts the script aside and rolls over to kiss him. They haven’t really done that at all today, Jin realizes, letting Kame’s weight settle against him and wrapping an arm loosely around his shoulders. Just kissed, because they can. Because they’re both here. It’s really nice, warm and sweet, and just right after the cookies.  
  
Kame feels really good, pressed up against him like that—strong shoulders and familiar taste. He’s warm already, been tucked under the covers for a while now, and his knee hooks easily over Jin’s. Not really suggesting anything, but just enough to make Jin want him closer.  
  
Maybe it’s not  _that_  late.  
  
“You want to?” Jin murmurs. He trails fingertips down Kame’s spine and moves his hips a little.  
  
There’s a short little exhale, and Kame smiles into the kiss. When he pulls back, fingers still in Jin’s hair, he seems to be considering. There’s this whole little dance of distracted math going on behind his eyes.  
  
“I’m kind of beat, sorry,” he decides finally, with an apologetic little smile, and it’s…there’s something weird in there. The math doesn’t quite add up, and Jin can’t put his finger on why. Not that it’s not  _okay_ , or whatever—a guy can be tired, sure, that happens—but it’s usually not Kame who’s too tired, and Jin isn’t sure if he should…worry.  
  
But he doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it or anything either, because it’s not, and it shouldn’t be, and he’s probably just being paranoid. Even Kame is allowed to be tired.  
  
“I can take care of you though, if you want,” Kame says. He brushes fingers along Jin’s waistband, and Jin feels a little lurch.  
  
He’s still…a little distracted by the tired thing. Wonders if he should ask about that before they—before he just lets it slide. But Kame also looks pretty interested in this, and…okay, maybe tired means different things to different people.  
  
Anyway, Kame looks hot all cozy and rumpled like that. And Jin was baking cookies  _all day_.  
  
The puppy-dog eyes must have slipped through while he was busy thinking, because Kame breathes a laugh at him and kisses him again, shifts a bit to put them in a good position, get Jin sort of nestled against his hip in that way that lets him move, and then…oh, yes. That feels good.  
  
It’s slow and a little bit lazy, but Jin likes it that way—likes the little kisses and the fingertips in his hair, the occasional slide of fingers beneath his waistband. He clings to Kame a little bit more as he gets closer, starts to get lost in the kisses, and then Kame’s mouth drags away, his body sliding down Jin’s and pressing kisses over his t-shirt, and in the gap between the hem of his shirt and his waistband. There’s a tug on the fabric, and then it’s cool and it’s hot, Kame’s mouth around him, taking him the rest of the way.  
  
Jin breathes through the aftershocks, blinks blurrily up at the ceiling as he comes down. Kame puts him back together and comes back up again, kisses him again. Even more lazily than before.  
  
“You are really good at that,” Jin says.  
  
“You make it easy,” Kame murmurs back, his voice all low like he knows Jin likes. Jin wraps arms around him and pulls him close, making Kame settle his weight all over Jin and just stay there.  
  
“You sure you don’t want?” Jin offers, trying to keep his eyes open, and Kame laughs again.  
  
“I’m good, I promise. But even if I weren’t, I’m not sure you’re safe to drive.”  
  
“Hey, I can still blowjob when I’m sleepy,” Jin complains, grinning. “I’ve got skills.”  
  
“I see,” Kame says, flicking a strand of hair away from Jin’s face. “Well, let’s put that theory to the test another night, shall we?”  
  
“You should take me up on it while you can though,” Jin points out. “Those are going to be some long months while you’re away.”  
  
Kame's smile fades a little, and his eyes start doing that…distracted thing again.  
  
Ah crap.  
  
“Hey,” Jin nudges him a little. “I was just kidding…”  
  
“I know,” Kame says quickly, with a little nod and smile. He looks like he's searching for the easy mood again too, but he doesn’t seem to be finding it.  
  
Jin watches him from underneath his eyelids. He’s not pulling away or anything, but he’s not really settled anymore either, and Jin…it was just a  _joke_.  
  
“You want to tell me what's going on?”  
  
“Nothing's going on,” Kame says, leaning in to nibble distractingly at Jin's chin. “It's just work stuff, that's all.”  
  
Jin frowns at that.  
  
Even the nibbles are not quite right, like Kame is trying to steal his wallet or something, and…that stupid script.  
  
Why does he still have that thing? Jin really can’t figure it out. Kame is thorough, but he doesn’t read every damn script they put in his inbox cover to cover, not even when they tell him to. He doesn’t put notes in a script he’s not seriously considering, and he doesn’t lose sleep over moving tours for projects he wants to take on, and he doesn’t get weird with Jin about sex-deprivation jokes when filming means a month in Hokkaido with weekends back in Tokyo.  
  
It  _has_  to be California.  
  
“Why are you afraid to go to California?” Jin asks.  
  
Kame stops. Jin hears him swallow, feels his breath on Jin’s neck, but Kame just kind of stays there, hidden.  
  
“Kame?” Jin asks again, shifting and nudging a bit to get Kame to lean up. Kame does so reluctantly, not meeting Jin’s eyes.  
  
“Why? Is it the English?”  
  
Kame breathes a small laugh. “They'd send a translator with me.”  
  
Yeah, they would. Good point. “Okay, so what then? Is it Going? They're not going to replace you just because you have to be away for three months, Kame. You could probably even figure out a VTR thing or a satellite thing or something.”  
  
“It's not that.”  
  
“So what is it then?”  
  
Kame is fidgeting on top of him, looking uncomfortable and sheepish, and…Jin doesn’t want to make him uncomfortable. But seriously, this is getting silly. Kame doesn’t do this, and Jin can’t think of any good reason why the hell—  
  
Wait.  
  
He peers at Kame. The way he’s trying to be fine and normal, and he’s not quite. The way he goes on and on about the shop-clerk guy and his motivations, and he’ll complain to Jin no-problem about the way the tour plans have gotten out of hand—but when Jin asks him anything about California, he gets a one-word answer.  
  
“You're worried about  _me_?”  
  
Kame presses his lips together a bit, but he doesn’t deny it.  
  
“What? Why?”  
  
“I don't know,” Kame mumbles, tugging at a wrinkle in the front of Jin’s shirt. “You just moved in here, things are finally kind of…you know. And three months is a long time.”  
  
Jin still feels like he’s missing something. It can’t be just that, just the  _time_. Not that Jin won’t miss him or whatever, but it’s not like they’re inseparable. “Kame, we've been apart for more than three months at a time before.”  
  
“Yeah,” Kame says, looking back at him steadily. “I know.”  
  
And that's…oh.  
  
Ohh…  
  
God. Kame is an idiot.  
  
“Kame, that isn’t… It won’t be like that. Okay?” Jin says, stroking hands over Kame’s arms. This would be easier if Kame could just relax. “In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t exactly got one foot out the door here. And unless you’re planning on hitting all the gay bars and picking up a bunch of guys…I really don’t see the problem. Why are you worried about this  _now_?”  
  
“Because it’s  _California_ , okay?” Kame snaps, looking a bit helpless and embarrassed by his own irrationality. “Nothing good ever happens in California.”  
  
Jin wants to laugh at that, but he doesn’t have the heart. “Kame, that’s not even—lots of good things have happened in California.”  
  
“Not for me.”  
  
“ _Yes_ , for you.”  
  
Kame goes a bit eyebrowy on him again—though at least he seems distracted from the helplessness. “Like what?”  
  
“I made up with you in California,” Jin says. “We started talking again in California. You taught me how to bake cookies. Remember?”  
  
Kame slants his eyes away—but he doesn’t seem to know how to argue with that.  
  
“It’s just a place, Kame,” Jin nudges, rubbing tiny circles in the small of his back. Wishing he could just settle again, do what feels right and not worry so much. “There’s nothing magic or evil about it. It’s not the reason we weren’t talking—it’s not even the reason I left, it’s just…a  _place_.”  
  
Kame sighs and slumps to the side, rolling off of Jin a bit and curling up next to him against the pillows. Jin follows and keeps their legs tangled together, not willing to let Kame get too far away from him when he’s being stupid.  
  
“I know, okay?” Kame sighs. “I  _know_  it’s crazy—I know it doesn’t make any sense, and I know you’re probably right, everything will be fine, and I should just take the thing and not worry about it, but…it’s three months. And then when I get back, you’d be on tour. And then I’d be on tour. And then who knows what the hell else, because the show is starting up again, and there’s this drama that’s probably going to be lined up for the winter season and I just…”  
  
Kame loses track of his words then. Just sighs, staring past Jin’s shoulder somewhere.  
  
“What?” Jin murmurs, poking him a little to wake him up again.  
  
Kame looks over at Jin again. He brings a hand up and runs the back of his fingers along Jin’s cheekbone, light as a feather. Tucks a strand of hair behind Jin’s ear and lets his fingertip linger on the lobe. “I’ve let you get too far away before. I don’t want to let that happen again.”  
  
“It won’t,” Jin says.  
  
Kame doesn’t look quite convinced.  
  
“Kame, I live in your bedroom. How much closer do you want me to be?”  
  
“That’s not what I mean.”  
  
“I know what you mean,” Jin says, sneaking in to bite him on the chin. “And, okay, yeah, shit happens, I can’t promise you there’s nothing we can do to fuck this up. But…I really don’t think we’re going to do anything to fuck this up. And I definitely don’t think me having to make do with my hand for three months while you’re off somewhere awesome doing work you love counts as fucking it up.”  
  
Kame laughs at that. He tries to hold it in, but Jin can feel the tension starting to unwinding beneath his fingers, bit by bit.  
  
“Maybe. Yeah…” Kame says, rolling closer and biting Jin back.  
  
Jin ducks his head a little to turn the bite into a kiss, and—there’s the lazy mood again, settling in. With just a little bit of teeth.  
  
“Anyway,” Jin murmurs between kisses, when he feels like it’s probably safe, “maybe I could come visit you. Show you around.”  
  
Kame pulls back just far enough to give him a shrewd look. “Like where?”  
  
“Places,” Jin says, smiling back. “Cool places. You’ll like them.”  
  
“Will they get me in trouble?”  
  
“They didn’t get me in trouble,” Jin points out—and then he moves in again and keeps up with the kissing, because that was nice, and Kame finally seems to be relaxing.  
  
Kame chuckles. “This is true…”  
  
“The beach is nice, too,” Jin says. “We could have a rambling beach house.”  
  
“Or a tent,” Kame suggests.  
  
Jin can’t help the stupid grin. “Or a tent,” he agrees, kissing Kame again. “We haven’t done that for a while.”  
  
“Mm-mm,” Kame hums. And then the kiss goes deeper, Kame’s hand a little firmer around the back of Jin’s neck, in that way that always makes him feel a little bit weak. And Kame’s other arm wraps tighter around Jin’s waist, holding him close.  
  
“So,” Kame murmurs low, after a while. A little bit breathless. “What would we do in this tent?”  
  
Jin reaches around behind him and takes Kame’s hand from the small of his back. Guides it down a little lower, until it slides into his pants, pushing them down his hips just a little.  
  
“Want a preview?”  
  
Kame nods. He looks exactly the right kind of awake now, and Jin feels that little leap and shiver that will never get old.  
  
*      *      *  
  
It’s soft and squidgy, the light not too bright on the walls yet and the world around him still rumpled and warm and fresh smelling like sunlight.  
  
There’s a darker smell too, hot and bitter and breakfasty, and Jin blinks blurrily at the mug on the corner by his face. The bed shivers and dips, and the rumples rustle, and then there’s more warm, more soft and hard against his back. Wrapped loosely around his waist. Jeans against his bare ankles and a kiss on his shoulder.  
  
“Morning,” Jin mumbles, letting his eyes fall closed again and looking for the hand at the end of the arm. The fingers open for him when he finds it, slot together with his.  
  
“Sleep well?” Kame murmurs into his hair.  
  
Jin moves his head against the pillow, hoping that works for a nod. “I dreamed about sharks.”  
  
Kame breathes a laugh and squeezes him gently around the middle. “Scary sharks or cute sharks?”  
  
“Talking sharks,” Jin says, cut off by a yawn. He squirms a little deeper under the covers, and Kame’s leg shifts up his thigh, a comfortable weight. “They kept asking me questions.”  
  
“What kind of questions?”  
  
Jin thinks a bit. But all he can remember is the water being too cold, and nobody letting him have a blanket because it would get wet. “I can’t remember.”  
  
Kame hums back. They lapse into silence for a while. Jin starts to hear the distant traffic from an open window, feel the pull of the coffee waiting for him nearby. Wonders what time it is, when Kame has to go to work, how much longer they can stay like this.  
  
“How about you?” he asks eventually. “Sleep well?”  
  
Kame nods against the back of Jin’s neck. “Yeah,” he says with a little smile. “I slept really well.”  
  
There’s another little kiss against Jin’s shoulder, and Jin just breathes it in with the coffee, smiling.  
  
“I called Watsuki-san this morning,” Kame says. “I’m taking the shop-clerk.”  
  
The smile spreads into a grin, and Jin tugs Kame’s arm a little tighter and squirms against him, feeling more awake by the minute. “You’d better be. I want my tent.”  
  
Kame laughs and kisses him again. “Anything you want.”  
  
They drift for a while longer in the peacefulness. Jin will have to get up eventually, he’s got a lunch thing with a guy who might have magazine connections, and then he’s got Theia after that. And he knows Kame has at least two meetings before that, early strategizing for the tour, and some other stuff he can’t remember right now because it’s too cozy here for thinking. The coffee is probably getting cold, but Kame’s leg isn’t nudging him anywhere or telling him he has to get ready for his meeting. So he stays right where he is, for now.  
  
This is everything he needs.


End file.
